


Sweet, Indifferent Dreams

by Sarai



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Asexuality Spectrum, Drama & Romance, Dreams, Friendship, Grishaverse Big Bang 2020, I really didn't know how to tag this one, It's not the focus of the story but there are ace characters, Jan Van Eck's A+ Parenting, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pining, Romance, background Inej Ghafa, background Jellen Radmakker, background Kaz Brekker, background Marya Hendriks/Jan Van Eck, background Marya Hendriks/OC, background Tamar Kir-Bataar/Nadia Zhabin, background Tolya Yul-Bataar/OC, fate being a cryptic little shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:06:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 25,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26247634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarai/pseuds/Sarai
Summary: When Wylan Van Eck is nine years old, he begins to dream. He dreams of a soulmate is bright flowers, an endless sky, and the taste of candied almonds. Jesper Fahey can barely wait for the dreams to start, to meet the love of his life one day just as his parents did. His soulmate is a flute, dark coffee, wood shavings, pebbles in a canal.Bad luck, worse parenting, and a few gangsters bring the boys together--but nothing is ever so simple in Ketterdam. Wylan's pretty sure Jesper hates him, and Jesper's pretty sure his soulmate is someone else.It's fate against circumstance in a city with little regard for either.
Relationships: Jesper Fahey/Wylan Van Eck
Comments: 34
Kudos: 105
Collections: Grishaverse Big Bang 2020





	1. Wylan - A Shade of Sublime

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Big Bang 2020 project, and I was lucky enough to be in a gang with [Lilgrayghost](https://lilgrayghost.tumblr.com/post/628340011863015424/for-kindness-ricochets-amazing-fic-from-the), [Julescries](https://julescries.tumblr.com/post/628243690908991488/my-art-for-the-fic-sweet-indifferent-dreams-by), [FrickleFrackleFloof](https://fricklefracklefloof.tumblr.com/post/628211742739169280/whats-jespers-favorite-food-for), and [Risenbydawn](https://risenbydawn.tumblr.com/post/628202390362996736/imperious-little-merchling). I'll link their fantastic artwork as it's posted! It was beta-read by [Iambutagoblinboy](iambutagoblinboy.tumblr.com/) and [nolu](https://nolu.tumblr.com/) who did their level best--any errors are my own. 
> 
> In a lot of ways it's a typical soulmate fic, but I also wanted to explore some questions around the idea of soulmates--can a person only have one soulmate? If soulmates are usually romantic/sexual partners, how would soulmates manifest for aro-spectrum & ace-spectrum people? What if your soulmate fundamentally changes?
> 
> Finally, a content warning: this fic will contained canon-typical ableism (Jan) and internalized ableism (Wylan)

In his dream, Wylan looked up at the infinite blue sky. He knew without turning his head that it stretched in every direction, just as it stretched visibly into the cloudless abyss. It was a blue so big his heart swelled because the world must be so much more wonderful than he had previously imagined if it had such colors in it. Wisps of pale pink flowers fringed his view, shimmying in the breeze, and the sun shone an impossible brightness just outside his field of vision.    
  
Wylan awoke that morning with the enormity of the world inside his chest. He awoke smiling about the beautiful, pure blue of that sky like a hundred shades all at once, smiling even at his bookshelf and the map on his wall. The map gave him headaches normally. He knew it named each country on the True Sea, that country's capital, and its exports, but to him it was covered in squiggles that refused to be still.   
  
That morning, he didn't care about the map or the dreary Ketterdam sky. He moved clumsily as he dressed and tripped over his own feet, but who could blame him? His body was in Ketterdam, but his mind… he only knew that he had dreamed of another place, a place grander than the Kerch countryside and  _ real _ . Somewhere in the world was a real place with an eternity sky, and in that place and under that sky was the girl Wylan was fated for. He wondered what she was doing, if she had dreamed of him, and how often she looked up.   
  
Striving for a shade of that sublime, living beauty, one day he plucked a small flower from the beds in the canalside garden. He wore the flower through a buttonhole on his shirt. At the end of the day, he pressed it in one of the books he couldn't read and piled more books on top of it. Then, for good measure, Wylan set one foot on the books and tested their balance.    
  
That was where the nanny found him, balanced on a stack of books with the hem of his nightshirt half-tangled around his shins.    
  
"What are you doing up there?" she asked. She was young for a nanny—he'd had enough to know—with honey-blond hair and brown eyes. Wylan didn't always like his nannies, but he liked Griet. She smiled at him every morning, and she often carried boiled sweets in the pocket of her crisp white apron.   
  
Now she extended both hands at once. Wylan  _ wanted _ to stand on his books and make sure the flower pressed flat… but he also wanted to take her hands and hop to the ground. He took her hands. It was a fun hop.   
  
She lifted him onto the edge of the bed.   
  
"I'm not very sleepy tonight," Wylan said.   
  
"Have you been to the washroom?" Griet asked. She crouched beside the bed and began unlacing one of his shoes.   
  
"Yes." Also, he could remove his own shoes. He had put them on, after all! But he wasn't in the practice of interfering with adult business. He could get onto the bed by himself, too—he was  _ nine _ —but he liked being picked up.   
  
"Cleaned your teeth?" Off came his other shoe.   
  
"Yes."   
  
"Good. Have you… what's that?"   
  
"What?"   
  
"That!" she said, pointing to something over his left shoulder.   
  
Wylan turned. He barely had time to notice the normalcy of his bedroom before Griet tickled him. He laughed and made a half-hearted effort to squirm away. Nobody else tickled him—Wylan suspected the sons of merchant houses weren't meant to be ticklish, but he was. He thought, briefly, of the girl from his dream and hoped she would make him laugh.   
  
Griet took a small, brown glass bottle from her apron pocket.   
  
Wylan frowned. "I don't like it."   
  
"I know." She scrubbed her hand over his curls and sat beside him on the bed. "But it's good for you. You're not well." She cupped his chin, tilted his head up. Her hand was soft, warm, and slightly damp, and it was enough to make him smile at her. "You're my friend and I don't want anything bad to happen to you. So you'll take your medicine for me, hm?"   
  
He nodded.   
  
"Good." She gave him a kiss on the forehead and a spoonful of the foul medicine, then pulled the covers back. "Lie yourself down."   
  
Wylan settled with his head on the pillow and that hot, rotten taste climbing up his throat. "I'm not sleepy," he insisted.   
  
"Try," she said, tucking the covers around him.   
  
He would. All the same, when he saw Griet approach his little pile of books, Wylan had to speak up. "Wait! Leave them."   
  
She hesitated.    
  
"Just tonight."   
  
Wylan did not dream of the sky that night, but when he woke, scared, he could just make out the little stack of books in the moonlight. He knew the flower was at the bottom and that he could keep his dab of color pressed between the pages of one of his useless books. He would keep it until he met the girl, somewhere out there in the wondrous world. 

* * *

  
  
If the sky had an opposite, it was the dining room in the Van Eck mansion on Geldstraat. Sturdy, dark wood walls replaced boundless blue. Instead of unchecked sunshine, it had a chandelier that filled the room as much with shadow as with light. While the sight of the sky and the dance of pink petals evoked a rustle of wind, the only consistent sounds in the dining room were the scrape of cutlery on plates, careful chewing, and the steady ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway.

"Your tutor tells me you've been uncooperative this week," Jan said across three ticks of the clock. "Stop fidgeting."   
  
Wylan stopped fidgeting. Instead he focused on the whorls in the polished mahogany table. His favorite part of the table was the knot by his left arm. The wood grain echoed in tiny, close grooves to one side and ever-widening ripples to the other. It looked like music, a steady harmony under a swelling and rolling melody.   
  
"You don't like your dinner?"   
  
"I'm not hungry."   


Wylan was never hungry when he and his father took dinner alone, and it was much to Wylan's shame that he dreaded these times. There was nothing to fear in the dining room. Not usually. The glittering chandelier was almost beautiful, but its edges were too sharp in Jan's presence, it was not so much affixed but dangling overhead. The chairs felt like they might collapse and drop Wylan into some gaping abyss.   
  
But he wasn't afraid. Afraid of his own father? It would be absurd. So when invited, Wylan double-checked his appearance (he didn't need a nanny to tell him when he had jam smears on his cuffs!), sat up straight, and tried to be good.   
  
"Eat."   
  
_ Tick. _   
  
Wylan picked up his fork. He ferried a bite of paling to his mouth. Normally he liked eel. Well, of course—who didn't like eel? He found chewing difficult in his father's presence, was all. He always felt he was chewing too noisily or too long, even though he had not been permitted in the dining room until he mastered basic table manners. The son of a respected merchant household chewing with his mouth open? Children were often to be seen and not heard, but meals were times for some children not to be seen, either.   
  
"So you  _ do _ know how to cooperate."   
  
Wylan froze. Time seemed to race even as the clock kept its steady count.   
  
"You're simply choosing to be uncooperative with Mister de Vries."   
  
With a mouthful of water, he managed the painful process of forcing half-chewed meat down his throat.   
  
"I had a dream, Father," he explained. His father's expression didn't change. Clearly that had not been enough. "A — a dream… about the girl I'm meant for."   
  
"I'm sure it felt important, Wylan."   
  
"No, it wasn't like other dreams! It was… it felt… different. It felt bigger than other dreams, like I was there."   
  
Jan sighed, sipping his wine, and gave his head a mournful shake, sending a chill through Wylan.  _ Wasn't this exciting? _ He had been eager to share the news despite his anticipation at seeing his father.   
  
"I hoped you might be spared this," Jan said.   
  
"Isn't… that good, to be fated?" Wylan asked. One of his past nannies had told him about fated pairs and special dreams. She told him all about the other person out there who was meant for him, and for whom he was meant.   
  
"For normal people, yes. I fear it would only be one more struggle for you. Who would wish to be fated for a defective? The insult alone could ruin us, if her family is prominent."   
  
Wylan hadn't thought of it that way. He looked at the shiny knot, the beautiful song of imperfection in an otherwise pretty but bland tabletop. He had just assumed that by the time he met his fated partner, he wouldn't be defective anymore. Wylan might be stupid, but he knew lots of words for it. How many nine-year-olds  _ really _ understood the word "defective"?   
  
"No more uncooperative days, then," Jan said. "We shall make you acceptable. Eat your dinner, Wylan."   
  
"I'm not hungry."   
  
Jan did not spare a glance for his son. He sipped his wine and turned to his own meal. After a moment, Wylan took another bite and chewed in measured silence.    
  
The clock ticked.


	2. Jesper - Best Friends

"But what did you see?" Jesper asked, a hint of a whine creeping into his voice.   
  
Aditi handed him the short end of a sheet and they took backwards steps away from one another. Their shadows were long now and Jesper watched the way his ma's shadow kept pace with her. The sheet was stiff from drying in the sun. They shook it out, Aditi efficiently, Jesper hurling his arms in enthusiastic waves like he could fan the sheet hard enough to turn back the breeze that blew the edge of the late afternoon heat.   
  
"It's personal," his ma said as each folded their side of the sheet in half. Seeing the twist in the middle, "Jes."   
  
"I thought we were going left," he said.   
  
"Jesper Llewellyn."   
  
"I did!" he insisted, but he fixed his side of the sheet. "What if I ask Da about his dreams?"   
  
"That's up to him," Aditi said. She finished the last few folds on her own and ran a hand over the sheet to smooth out the wrinkles. Tossing it into the laundry basket, she said, "Now, who will help me cook dinner tonight?"   
  
"Me!" Jesper cried, even though it was a given.    
  
He always helped his ma with the cooking, and with everything else, and he loved it. As they headed inside, she stroked a hand over his dark hair.   
  
"Why is my little rabbit so curious about soulmates today, hm?"   
  
"Just am," he said, shrugging.   
  
He knew he had a soulmate. And one day he was going to meet his soulmate, obviously. They would be best friends, because of course they would. Even though he hadn't yet had a single special dream about him, Jesper  _ knew _ he was out there somewhere, and how could it be years until they met? Jesper knew he could meet his soulmate any day. That was why, on the rare occasions he had sweets, he tried to save half. (He always gave in and ate the rest, anyways.)   
  
As he helped prepare dinner by scrubbing dirt from some carrots (he would not be saving any of  _ those _ for his soulmate), Jesper asked, "Have you ever been across the True Sea?"   
  
"I've never wanted to leave Novyi Zem."   
  
Jesper gnawed his lip, thinking that over. Then, "But what if Da hadn't come here?"   
  
"He did come here." She kissed the top of his head. "Because it was meant to happen this way. Just like it will with your soulmate. You'll find her."   
  
"No, Ma, him."   
  
"You will find him."   
  
The idea of a soulmate always stayed close to Jesper. He wasn't, not really,  _ lonely _ , he had his friends at school and he always felt loved, but he wanted what his parents had. He wanted his companion, his sharer in adventures, the person who would laugh at his jokes and find it really, really impressive that he could turn three cartwheels without stopping. His soulmate would listen to the too-many words that built up in Jesper's head and wouldn't care when he brought home low marks on a composition from school. Not that his da was especially harsh over these things, but his soulmate wouldn't say things like,  _ It's all right, lad. You'll do better next time. _ His soulmate would say, _ I thought comparing raindrops to teeth was really creative! _   
  
As he grew up, Jesper started to wonder if his soulmate could be a girl. Normally he thought not, but it wasn't impossible. Some of his friends at school were girls. He liked girls and he had those sorts of feelings about girls. It was just that when he pictured someone beside him, listening to his thoughts at night under Da's snoring from the next room or taking turns kicking a stone on the walk to school, Jesper always pictured a boy.   
  
"What if I never have those dreams ever?" Jesper burst out one evening when he was eleven and aware of his da's exhaustion but unable to keep from speaking up.   
  
"You will, Jes," Colm promised.   
  
But it was coming up on time for school to start again! How was he supposed to listen to his classmates whisper about this again and admit it hadn't happened for him?   
  
He knew what his da would say. He would say that Jesper's classmates might well be lying themselves. They didn't want to tell the truth: that they were waiting, same as he was. Jesper had asked how Colm knew that. No one who'd had the dreams, Colm had said, would talk about them so cavalierly.    
  
"But what if I  _ don't _ ," Jesper persisted.   
  
"Some people don't," Colm said, "but it doesn't mean they're alone. Not everyone meets their soulmate. It doesn't mean they love the person they're with any less."   
  
"How can you be in love with someone you're not meant to be in love with?"   
  
Colm didn't know what to say to that.   
  
It didn't happen, though. Not that night, not the next, not for a long time. Jesper hoped and stewed.   
  
By the time he had his first dream, Jesper was thirteen years old. He had left behind childish ideas like pretending he had his soulmate by his side when he sneaked out of church or labored through boring, repetitive days of farmwork. It wasn't the  _ work _ he minded. It was the dullness. Jesper no longer pretended he had his soulmate beside him, but he still hoped for the day it would be true.   
  
Could he be blamed for his disappointment?   
  
"A flute," Jesper muttered to himself, yanking up weeds with a vengeance. That was all the dream gave him, a flute! He felt almost cheated by the emptiness of it. How much could a flute mean to anyone?   
  
Over the next few years, he took notes on his dreams, trying to piece together the clues, the mystery of his fated boy — he still believed his soulmate must be a boy. He saw fog creeping down cobbled streets, cups of coffee steaming on cold mornings, awoke with lingering scents of wood shavings. He saw pebbles disappear into a canal. He saw, in a dream that turned his stomach, shroud-wrapped bodies piled onto small boats.   
  
More and more, as he grew older, he saw pale purple notes of Kerch kruge.    
  
When he was sixteen, Jesper had the opportunity to go where he wanted, to do what he wanted—to make the decision that would set the course of his life for years to come   
  
"Are you sure this is what you want?" Colm asked.   
  
He had postponed this discussion, but now the enrolment papers were spread on the kitchen table. Colm faced his son and the very real possibility of sending him across the True Sea. Jesper's pieces of the application were complete. He couldn't go on his own. Jesper couldn't afford to start university without his father's support, and he wasn't sure he would go without his father's approval.   
  
"It's what I want, Da."   
  
"There's the college at Weddle."   
  
He knew his only options were Weddle and Ketterdam. Da would never send him to Os Kervo and since he didn't speak Shu, Koba and Ahmrat Jen were out of the question even if the Shu had a better record of treatment toward people like him. Obviously Fjerda wasn't an option. The Ravkan presence was too strong to the south, and Leflin was a religious university. But the Kerch? They didn't care if a person was Grisha. They were by all accounts refreshingly indifferent to anything but money.   
  
There was nothing wrong with the college in Weddle. But his soulmate was in Ketterdam. Besides, Jesper wanted to travel. He wanted to see the world and this was his chance!   
  
"I applied to Weddle," he reminded Colm. He had done it to make his father happy, and because however well he did in his own schooling, Ketterdam University might not be impressed by the second-best student in a little frontier town.   
  
Colm sighed. "Don't make your choices for a boy."   
  
"It's not just about him, Da. This is what I want."   
  
Still Colm hesitated. It wasn't what he wanted, Jesper knew that. Colm wanted an heir, a son who could aspire to inherit the farm and pass it on to his son in turn. But Jesper wanted  _ more _ . The world was bigger than that.   
  
He didn't like it. Colm visibly didn't like this. Reluctantly, he nodded and signed the forms.


	3. Interlude: Empire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter will contain classism, ableism, and misogyny... it's Jan o'clock.

Jan Van Eck dreamed of an artist. He saw her tying an apron over a gown of fine, dark wool. He watched her mix red pigment with water and a splash of oil. Though he did not see the painting, he saw the grace of her hand and wrist as she brought the brush to canvas.   
  
He had few dreams, but over and over he saw her tying her apron and mixing paints. He saw her winding yarn and tucking a doll under lacy blankets.   
  
An artist and a woman. Most importantly, she was of acceptable means. He noted the quality of her wool dress, the spotless lace of her doll's blankets. He had been rather disturbed by those ridiculous tales of men of means finding their fated partners in sculleries or even factories, all those nonsense stories in novels popular among the riffraff of Ketterdam.    
  
After university, Jan could have gone directly to work with his father but chose instead to take an apprenticeship with Karel Van Der Bijl, owner of dozens of factories and producer of over a quarter of the trousers in Kerch. Simple as it seemed, the fact remained that everyone wore trousers and Van Der Bijl had amassed himself a respectable fortune off of them. Jan knew shipping like the back of his hand. He knew his father's allies on the Council, and his enemies, too, their businesses and their families. He knew less of manufacturing and intra-national distribution.    
  
No man alive showed the freshness of his cash more than Van Der Bijl.    
  
The old man threw a midwinter party every year, a cheery smile on his leathery face and his tufty gray hair all aquiver with the noise and fuss of the room. Musicians had been hired, caterers paid for, invitations extended to all his business partners. It was a strange sort of circumstance. More than one invitation was accepted from a sense of obligation—Van Der Bijl was a strange man, but a very successful one, and who wanted to cross Ketterdam's trouser merchant?   
  
Indeed, even after Jan had finished his apprenticeship and returned to working with his father, slowly taking on responsibility for the family business, he continued attending Van Der Bijl's midwinter party. He was in his late twenties now. He was past the point for this to truly serve the business. Yet here he was, celebrating the longest night of the year.   
  
Jan wove carefully through the crowd, catching snatches of conversation here and there, greeting some folks, but mostly focused on getting to Van Der Bijl. He was speaking with a young woman, but turned from her when he saw someone approach.   
  
"Jan! Do come over, Mister Van Eck, do, have you met Miss Hendricks?"   
  
"No, but—"   
  
"Marya Hendricks, Jan Van Eck. Jan Van Eck, Marya Hendricks."   
  
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mister Van Eck," she said, dropping into a curtsy.   
  
And Jan forgot. He forgot why he had wanted to speak to Mister Van Der Bijl. He forgot who Mister Van Der Bijl was, who  _ he _ was. Adrift on a sea of pure foolishness, he forgot everything but the young lady in front of him. Her red-gold curls were pulled back, but some had fallen loose—a look that would have been sloppy on anyone else. It looked nice on her. She had lovely hazel eyes and a wide smile.   
  
Then, a moment later, he remembered himself.   
  
"Miss Hendricks," he said, giving her a small bow. "The pleasure is mine."   
  
By Ghezen's hand, it was.   
  


* * *

  
  
Kerch tradition required a pair of shoes for a wedding proposal. That was nonsense, of course. Perhaps the country peasantry adhered to it. Jan lived in the modern era. He, his father, and their solicitor negotiated a contract with the Hendricks family and their solicitor.   
  
"She's beautiful," his father said.   
  
Jan had the good sense not to confess that Marya Hendricks was his fated partner. His father, like most sensible men of a respectable class, put little stock in such things. It was Jan's luck that his fated partner was acceptable as she was: wealthy, attractive, from a well-reputationed family.   
  
No, it was not his luck. It was the will of Ghezen. He never would have fated a worthy Kerch man to an unworthy, a  _ poor _ , woman.   
  
"You left her claims on her own inheritance."   
  
Yes—Jan had done that.   
  
"It all becomes part of the Van Eck empire in time," he pointed out. "Her son will be my son."   
  
His father wasn't wrong. The Hendricks inheritance was considerable, but he was wrong, too. Jan could wait. Marya loved Jan. Not only that, she wanted what he offered her. She wanted an easy life in which she had only to worry about her music, her painting, providing him an heir, and continuing to look at him as she did. He did not quite feel the same himself, but he liked the sensation of being seen in that way.   
  
Besides, this was about something more than Jan. Marya's property needed not belong to him. He would not be the last Van Eck.   
  
He was not.   
  
Within a year, Jan held the next head of the Van Eck empire in his arms.    
  
Not often, of course. That was what the nannies were for. But everything seemed perfect. Jan had his heir, and with Wylan's birth, a guarantee that the Hendricks and Van Eck estates would one day be joined. His father had all but completely stepped down, leaving Jan all but completely in charge of the company. He was married to his fated partner and she continued to give him those looks that made him feel a strange sort of pleasant.   
  


* * *

  
  
Jan's fated partner had provided him an insufficient heir. The older Wylan grew, the clearer Jan saw that the boy posed a threat to the respect of the Van Eck name, not to mention the disaster he would be to the company. Jan said nothing, only mulled over the problem. As he did, he spent less and less time with his family.   
  
One night, as Jan sat in his office, in came Marya. Jan raised his eyebrows. He hadn't seen his wife here unexpectedly at night, and dressed so… little. Yet here she was. Quite a lot of her.   
  
"Marya."   
  
She was beautiful. She stole his breath. Even after years with this woman, Jan couldn't deny the effect on him when he saw her like this, her chemise thin against her breasts, her hips, the softness of her belly.    
  
"Jan," she murmured.    
  
She kissed him, her fingers in his hair. He put his hands on her hips to pull her closer. It had been too long. He was busy with work. With the problem. It had been too long since they felt like a husband and wife or like the fated partners that they were. Marya leaned one knee on the chair, outside Jan's thigh, and they each gasped half a breath before they were kissing again. Jan slid a hand up her thigh as she unbuckled his belt.   
  
In that breathy voice that, eight years ago, even four years ago, would have turned him to putty, she said, "Let's make a baby."   
  
He paused. So that was her game. Now thoroughly disinterested (mentally, he could not stop the rather distasteful physical response), he shoved her away.   
  
"I'm busy, Marya."   
  
"You're not too busy for this," she said, moving toward him again. "We'll try again."   
  
"And what will we do with the other one?" Jan asked, perhaps more honestly than he meant to.    
  
Marya responded with a soft gasp. She stepped back and folded her arms across her chest, her hands tucked up.   
  
Well, shit. They were having this conversation now, weren't they?   
  
"He can't inherit," Jan said, "he's not fit. Any new child you give me would require that Wylan be disinherited. The new child will begin his life leading the business with a mark against him in the minds of his peers."   
  
"He's only eight."   
  
_ Only? _ Most eight-year-olds were reading and writing. Jan was a reasonable man, he had no expectation of tidy handwriting or poetry composition from an eight-year-old. He did expect the ability to write one's own name. One could always learn more. So long as one had the ability to learn at all, one could learn more.   
  
"Is there any chance, Jan?"   
  
He regarded Marya for a long moment. His fated partner, beautiful Marya who had added wealth to his empire, who had doubtless done her best to give him an heir… he hated the way she looked at him now. He wondered, briefly, if he let her give him another child, if he agreed to find an acceptable place for the mistake, would she look at him with love again?   
  
Then Marya asked, "Is there any chance for Wylan?"   
  
"No." But there was a chance for Marya.   
  
She nodded, and he saw in her eyes that the love between them was gone.


	4. Jesper - Fourth Harbor

Jesper’s soulmate took his breath away. All the tiny pieces he had known—shrouded bodies, the Ketterdam fog. He had woken once with the taste of strong coffee in his mouth and while he didn’t much care for coffee, he looked at his soulmate’s lips and knew he’d like that taste in a kiss.

His dreams had shown him flashes of wealth. They were rarely at the center of the dream, but Jesper remembered a dark wool suit, a smashed teacup with what looked like real gold gilting its rim. He hadn’t expected to meet someone like that in Ketterdam’s notorious Barrel, yet here he was, side by side with his soulmate just as he’d always imagined. They made their way down an alley in Zelver District, behind the warehouses by Fourth Harbor. Kaz had frowned at Jesper's choice of attire, but he didn't own anything that made him blend into the dusky gray.

Now Jesper was thrumming with excitement, thumbs stroking his revolvers. 

He took a break from petting his revolvers to roll up his sleeve. 

“It’s not going anywhere,” Kaz said.

“I know that.”

When he first got the tattoo, Jesper thought it looked like Kaz’s. It did look like Kaz’s—his and every other member of the Dregs, but to Jesper, the most important was Kaz. From the moment they met, Jesper had been drawn to the sharp-edged boy. It wasn’t until he heard Kaz tapping out a rhythm against his cane that he had realized why.

Even after months as a tattooed member of the Dregs, Jesper barely believed it. He had found his calling here, his place, his soulmate. The life of adventures and gunfights was just what Jesper wanted, a perfect home away from the gambling halls. Sometimes he thought his soulmate should keep that itch away.

Sometimes he did.

Kaz paused. Jesper drew his revolvers, watching the streets as Kaz finessed the padlock. It clicked open without incident. The two slipped into the warehouse, drawing the door shut behind them. In one of these warehouses was a shipment of rare dyes from the Southern Colonies. They were worth a small fortune. Kaz had bought the information with a bribe to one of the pleasure houses.    
  
"Is today important to you?" Jesper asked as they made their way up the stairs. The building was dim, just enough half-light filtering through the high windows to show outlines of stacked crates.   
  
"It will be, if this goes off right."   
  
Jesper didn't mean the job.   
  
That morning, he had stumbled back to the Slat sometime around ten, his lips sticky with apple syrup and his pockets empty—it had been a fine night at the tables and he spent his last pennies on waffles. What better way to end an extended evening than by pulling the pillow over his head and tumbling into sleep?   
  
He had dreamed, uselessly, about a flower pressed under a stack of books. He couldn't reconcile it with a boy like Kaz Brekker, though he noticed the flower had been the single spot of bright. Maybe Kaz used it for a job, for… some reason. Maybe…   
  
Maybe the flower contained an untraceable poison.   
  
More than he wondered about the flower, Jesper wondered about Kaz. The dreams always struck on anniversaries. Was today Kaz's birthday? The anniversary of his leg injury? Something else entirely? It was obvious they were soulmates. He might as well acknowledge it, but that was Kaz. He never said the things that most needed saying.   
  
They climbed out through one of those high windows, helped onto the roof by Inej.   
  
Jesper greeted her with a nod and a grin. "Wraith."   
  
Fog had rolled in off the harbor. Though they saw one another clearly, Jesper couldn't help peering over the side of the building. Two stories up and he couldn't make out the cobblestoned street below. The swirls of fog made him uneasy. They were good for a job, but reminded him too much of the ocean: you never knew what lurked down there.   
  
They climbed from that roof to the next and jumped to another, finally crossing to their destination on a plank. Jesper was surprised Kaz could make the crossing. One of these days, he would stop underestimating him. Kaz would probably hate it if he knew Jesper wasn't sure he could manage with his cane.   
  
"Explain to me again why we're working with the Bullyrooks," Jesper requested. "It's starting to look like we're doing all the work." Which about matched what Jesper knew about the Bullyrooks. They were a young gang, and not much good at anything.   
  
"Kaz always has his reasons," Inej reminded him.   
  
"I didn't say otherwise."   
  
Kaz's rasp cut across them both: "Bullyrooks got the tip from Onkle Arend."   
  
"Don't you pay Onkle Arend for information?" Jesper asked. Arend ran the Snow Pearl, a brothel appealing to those with a taste for Fjerdans. Something for everyone, he supposed distastefully.   
  
"This isn't important."   
  
Jesper bristled at being sidelined—let alone by his soulmate—but held his tongue. He toyed with a loose button on his cuff as he waited for Inej to complete the next step of their job.   
  
The three of them broke into the second warehouse through a high window and started down a staircase to the ground floor. Somewhere between the stories, Inej evaporated. Jesper scanned the shadows, but found no sign. He guessed he could have known exactly where Inej was and still not seen her until she wanted to be seen.   
  
A series of long and short knocks in an unnecessarily complicated rhythm sounded.   
  
Kaz opened the door. In the misty evening, their contacts were silhouettes until they came nearer. The silhouettes on the ground stayed down. Jesper glanced to Kaz for confirmation—too many bodies were messy. A firefight was one thing—a glorious thing, and an excellent idea if Jesper did say so himself—but guards taken out undid their stealth efforts. But Kaz seemed unfazed.   
  
"Brekker," said a burly boy with duckling-pale hair.    
  
"Vinke," Kaz said.   
  
"You remember our deal. Rooks take the big risks and we take the big reward, you'll get a third share."   
  
"What?" Jesper demanded. A third?! "Just because you couldn't—"   
  
"It's okay, Jes," Kaz interrupted. He gave Jesper a meaningful look, and though Jesper didn't understand it, he knew Kaz was asking for his trust… and demanding his silence. "We agreed and the deal is the deal."   
  
Jesper let the others go ahead, stroking his revolvers. He didn't like this.   
  
"Kaz—the old man's letting the Bullyrooks take two-thirds?"   
  
"What the old man doesn't know can't hurt him," Kaz muttered, and followed after the Bullyrooks before Jesper could adapt to  _ that _ little fact. They were working without Per Haskell knowing? Just what had Kaz cooked up?  
  
He couldn't imagine. Nor could he wait to learn!   
  
Jesper stroked his revolvers as he followed Kaz and the Bullyrooks deeper into the warehouse. The shadows unsettled him. He told himself Inej could be anywhere in those shadows, and she could… but so could any spider. So could loads of threats. Jesper needed all of a heartbeat to be armed and ready. He still felt vulnerable now. This whole job felt off.   
  
"This way," Kaz said.   
  
At the back of the warehouse, Kaz tried to pry open a crate. When he couldn't get it, he turned the job over to Jesper, who glanced at the assembled Bullyrooks with uncertainty. Was he going to need his powers? Luckily, no. The lid gave and out of the crate came promised barrels of dye powders. They were small, but each one was worth a fortune.    
  
Kaz and Jesper distributed the barrels.   
  
"Remember," Kaz said, "we'll meet up at the alleyway off Mosselenstraat."   
  
Vinke nodded, accepting a barrel from Kaz. "Sure, sure," he agreed.   
  
Jesper reached for another barrel, but as the last of the Bullyrooks made their escape, Kaz shook his head. He indicated the stairs instead.   
  
_ What? _   
  
This was just a step too far for Jesper. None of this had made any sense. They were giving the Rooks too big a cut for a job the Dregs easily could've managed. And Vinke clearly had no intention of meeting up with them off Mosselenstraat!   
  
Jesper had just opened his mouth to protest when Kaz faded back into the shadows, motioning for Jesper to follow. They made their way deep into the warehouse just as Jesper heard, from outside, "And just what're you lads up to?"    
  
The voice made his blood freeze. "Kaz—"   
  
"Sh!"   
  
Kaz lifted the lid of a large trunk and motioned Jesper inside. This was far past what he had expected for the night and Jesper wanted to object, but he wanted even more to not come face-to-face with Pekka Rollins. Especially when he heard the first gunshot.   
  
Jesper scrambled into the trunk. Kaz climbed in after him. It wasn't exactly comfortable, but they had space enough to sit up as Kaz produced screws seemingly from nowhere and reattached hinges on the trunk. As he settled himself against the burlap bags of what smelled like coffee, Jesper understood why things had seemed so strange. No wonder Kaz had turned over a lion's share of the profits. No wonder he made sure he had Jesper at his side. This had been a setup from the start.   
  
_ And he had trusted Jesper to have his back! _   
  
Jesper touched his revolvers. His babies still might need to save the day.   
  
The two boys stayed in the trunk for what felt like hours, Jesper getting increasingly restless. He struggled to keep himself quiet. Keeping himself still wasn't an option. Neither, though, was getting found and murdered!   
  
Finally, they emerged into the darkened warehouse. It was deathly still, deathly silent, and smelled of gunpowder and blood.   
  
Kaz restored the warehouse as best he could. The Dime Lions had left the Bullyrooks lying a mess by the no longer missing dye barrels. Jesper and Kaz made their way around them and, like nothing had happened, out the door.   
  
More bodies lay in the street. Jesper recognized one as Hywel Lewis, a Kaelish man fairly new to Ketterdam who had fallen in with the Dime Lions. Of course he had. Rollins turned on his Kaelish charm when faced with a fellow countryman. That was the final piece of the puzzle: the Dime Lions were guarding this warehouse. They must have been on some merch or trader's payroll. Kaz knew, and tricked the Bullyrooks into killing Dime Lions so the Dime Lions would wipe out the Bullyrooks. Jesper wasn't sure how or why, but it was cruelly efficient.    
  
They were several blocks from the warehouse and closer to their own stomping grounds when Jesper’s resolve finally broke. He had been with the Dregs long enough to prove his worth with his guns and to question it with his bad luck at three man bramble. It was long enough that Jesper had the tattoo of the crow and cup on his right forearm. It was long enough that Kaz trusted him.

“So,” Jesper said, stretching his long arms over his head. He was still itching after too many long minutes in that trunk. This seemed like as good a time as any to casually drop explosives into the conversation. “What were your dreams like?”

“What?” Kaz rasped.

“You know, your dreams. About your soulmate.”

Kaz snapped, “I don’t have those,” and quickened his pace.

Jesper could have caught up, but he didn’t want to. He stroked his revolvers, which remained disappointingly cold and unused. Obviously he knew about Kaz’s dreams—they were his memories!—and obviously they were fated. So why was Kaz unwilling to tell Jesper what he already knew?


	5. Wylan - Scar

A week after he built his first explosives for Kaz Brekker, Wylan allowed himself a few moments to think about… about _him_. Wylan knew by now that he was meant for a Zemeni boy—he felt so foolish looking back on his youthful convictions that he must be meant for a girl, _could_ be meant for a girl. Wylan understood that it was rare for dreams to show fated partners, almost unheard of, but he had seen his partner's hands. Ghezen, his hands were beautiful. The strangest thing was that Wylan wasn't certain what those hands were doing precisely, cleaning some sort of small machinery he thought, only that they did it with confidence and adeptness. He had narrow fingers with square tips, a small scar by the base of his left thumb.   
  
Wylan rolled onto his back, staring up at the ceiling, the floor for the couple who fought so often. He wondered if they slept on a narrow cot like his, what it would be like to be so physically close. He wondered if they were meant.  
  
He would not meet his fated partner now, of course. Perhaps that was for the best. What did he have to offer to the boy with the beautiful hands? How could he meet a boy used to eternities of blue sky, clean wind that smelled of promised lightning, flowers in orange and white so rare no one Wylan spoke to had even been able to name them—how could he meet someone from a world of such wonders and bring him into this place? There were lice in his bed and he kept the window shut because the outside always smelled of some bodily excretion. Wylan remembered waking to the lingering taste of candied almonds.   
  
He had nothing to offer. There were no joys or fine things left now.  
  
As he dressed for another day at the tannery, Wylan caught sight of the marks on his arms and shook his head. There were colored patches from splashes of dyes and still-healing chemical burns. His body was spoiled by the tannery and his heart was marked by what he did for Kaz Brekker—those bombs were _illegal_ , they were going to hurt people—but, just maybe, he could survive this place. He would be careful with his money but he could at least afford breakfast. A bit of food to make him stronger through the day, to make him a better worker. Maybe they would pay him a bit more and he could leave even faster.  
  
He bought a two-day-old roll. The bread was hard and the cheese on top was unsettlingly chewy—Wylan suspected the "two" had been an exaggeration. He wished he had coffee, just one cup of strong coffee to soften the bread and wash away the taste…   
  
But no, although he could buy himself a cup, he wouldn't. Who knew when Brekker would send for him again? Wylan needed to be careful. If Brekker needed him often enough, he could even get himself out of Kerch, catch the first ship to… to… to wherever. To anywhere that wasn't Kerch, where his father might find him, or Novyi Zem. He was fairly certain the boy for whom he was meant wasn't just of Zemeni heritage but actually from Novyi Zem—there were a few plants and snippets of architecture he had sketched for his tutors that indicated Novyi Zem. Avoiding the boy from his dreams would be easy.  
  
The daydreams helped Wylan keep his head through a day of woozy scrubbing. He could go to the Wandering Isle. Maybe he remembered enough Fjerdan to go there. And he would… would…  
  
He didn't know. He would manage. If he could scrub vats, he could scrub pots, floors.   
  
"Kaz was impressed."  
  
Wylan jumped almost out of his skin! He recognized Jesper's drawling voice—he didn't think he could forget the boy who had strolled onto the dyeing floor with his bright clothes and perfect smile, not if he lived for a thousand years. He just hadn't expected to hear it. He hadn't expected to be addressed at all as he walked back to the boarding house.  
  
"Relax, kid."  
  
"I am relaxed!" Wylan squeaked indignantly.  
  
Jesper chuckled. "Sure. He sent me to fetch you back since apparently you don't bother reading your letters."  
  
Wylan's throat cinched tight and he clutched his satchel. _He sent me_. This was how he died after all? The second letter had arrived three days ago and a third just yesterday. They were tucked under Wylan's mattress, unopened.   
  
"Relax," Jesper repeated, drawing out the word. "Look, he's not like the others. You can tell Kaz no. He won't come after you."  
  
"Oh—Kaz."  
  
Of course. Why would Jesper be working for Jan Van Eck? _Of course_ he meant Kaz.  
  
Oblivious to Wylan's panic, Jesper rolled his eyes. "So are you coming or do I tell him you're not interested?"  
  
Wylan hesitated. The bombs he built had been carefully measured. Flash bombs couldn't hurt anybody. The heavier stuff was more noise than power—fuss, just as Jesper called it. But whether or not the bombs themselves had been the weapons, Wylan knew they were used to hurt people. To commit crimes.  
  
 _And?_   
  
The bombs hurt people, and if he built enough, he might just buy his own life, get out of Kerch.   
  
_And_ he had eaten breakfast every day since building those bombs.  
  
"I'm coming." It was only for now.  
  
"Glad we have that resolved," Jesper said, his patience audibly wearing thin. "Now come on."  
  
Kaz wanted more bombs.  
  
Wylan wasn't surprised. Why else would a gang member be sending for him? Before he got to work, though, they had another matter to discuss.   
  
"I would prefer if you didn't send me anything in writing."  
  
Kaz paused. For the first time, he really seemed to see Wylan, and Wylan wasn't sure Kaz liked what he saw. He raised his chin stubbornly.  
  
"It's not secure."  
  
After a moment, Kaz nodded. "Fine," he said. "Jes."  
  
"Like I don't have anything better to do?" Jesper demanded. "He can learn his way around Ketterdam."  
  
It made Wylan feel small, but he stood his ground.   
  
"Maybe he just wants more time with your face. Since when do you pass up a chance to show off?"  
  
Jesper splayed his hand on the table. Wylan didn't know if Jesper was looking at his work or Wylan himself. He was too busy staring at that familiar hand, feeling like the world was opening into a gaping pit beneath him.  
  
 _No._   
  
It couldn't be.  
  
How could it be Jesper—sharp, shining Jesper, who was too bright to be sullied by the Barrel. Jesper with his accented Kerch. Jesper with a scar by the base of his left thumb and long, square-tipped fingers.  
  
Wylan swallowed. How much did Jesper know? Had his dreams shown him Wylan's affliction? Would he tell Kaz—  
  
"Wylan," Kaz growled.  
  
Wylan shook himself. "I need to work," he muttered, turning his attention to the supplies in front of him.  
  
By the end of the night, he had decided Jesper didn't know. Wylan worked quietly and efficiently in an otherwise empty room, alone with his thoughts, and he decided Jesper _couldn't_ know. He would have said something, right? Or was his silence his way of saying it?  
  
No… silence didn't seem to be Jesper's preferred method of communication.  
  
Maybe Wylan wasn't Jesper's fated partner. He had never heard of that, of someone being meant for a person who was meant for someone else, but it seemed obvious now that he thought of it. Someone like Jesper wouldn't have a defective partner.  
  
Still, Wylan needed to get out of Ketterdam as quickly as possible. He thought of the look on Jesper's face when Kaz said he would retrieve Wylan next time. It was better for all parties if Wylan was gone before Jesper had a chance to realize, if they were meant for each other at all.


	6. Interlude: The Frog Wife

"I saw a pot boiling over a fire and a pair of red mittens."   
  
"They were stupid mittens."   
  
Tamar had never complained about her accommodations. She was a woman who slept soundly on a swaying shipboard hammock, who could pick a nice spot of ground for her bed when the occasion called for it. She liked to think this would have been true even without her Heartrender abilities to put herself to sleep and ease bruises or stiff muscles.   
  
Her wife was a different story. Nadia made do if she must, but took no pride in it. She was happier with feather pillows and silk sheets. Never mind that she was currently ignoring said pillows in favor of resting her head on Tamar's chest. Tamar certainly didn't mind!    
  
"I thought they were cute," Nadia said.    
  
Tamar ran her fingers through Nadia's hair, stroked the tip of one finger along the shell of her ear. She felt the steady beat of Nadia's heart and the even draw of her breath. She wanted to feel and to remember each side to every second. The two Grisha would live together for hundreds of years. And Tamar wanted the most of every one of thousand billions of seconds with Nadia.    
  
"They were daring," Tamar said, regarding her red mittens. Of everything Nadia's dreams might have shown her, they chose those mittens! "I wore them because they were obvious, to show I could take on anyone."   
  
"You?" Nadia asked. "Showing off? I'm shocked."   
  
Tamar laughed. "You love me."   
  
She kept an eye on the window, where the first hints of grey light crept around the curtains. It wasn't morning, not yet. Not really. They had time.   
  
"I saw frogs," Nadia said. "I had so many dreams about frogs! Why were you so fond of them?"   
  
"I wasn't." Tamar, in fact, remembered her first dream about frogs. "I had dreams about frogs. Wading into the creek—"   
  
"—the frog so big you needed both hands to pick it up," Nadia finished describing Tamar's dream.    
  
For a moment, both women were silent, accepting the implications of their shared dream. It was difficult to explain precisely what made a dream about one's soulmate different from other dreams, but Tamar knew the difference when she felt it. She knew this dream came to her from someone else—and she believed it came to Nadia in the same way.    
  
"We have another wife," Nadia said.   
  
Yes they did.   
  
Somewhere out there was a woman who had loved frogs. Tamar had never felt anything lacking when she was with Nadia. She didn't feel anything lacking now. In fact, it made perfect sense. Tamar and Nadia rarely argued. Each slept soundly beside the other, each respected the other's interests when they didn't share them. Their love was easy and comfortable, and Tamar believed another woman might easily join them. They had space in their relationship for her. They had a strong love with which to welcome her.   
  
"How many of my dreams were yours," Tamar wondered, not expecting Nadia to know the answer. "I saw the Little Palace for the first time at sunset. It looked much bigger to you than it did when I finally got here."   
  
"I was seven!"   
  
"A likely story." Tamar knew exactly the response that would prompt.   
  
Nadia nudged Tamar's hip. "Are you calling me a liar?"   
  
"No. Only reminding you I have ways of getting to the truth." Tamar was rewarded for her bravado with an increasing pulse from Nadia.   
  
"Oh do you!" Nadia huffed. She pulled away from Tamar, propping herself up on one elbow in mock indignation. "Not that I was much smaller, anyway, than you are now."   
  
Genuinely surprised, Tamar laughed. "Are you complaining?"   
  
Nadia grinned. "What if I am?"   
  
Tamar tackled her. Etherealki received some combat training in the Little Palace, but Nadia, for all her strength, had never really taken to it. She  _ could _ fight. Unlike Tamar, she didn't love it, nor did she take much pride in it.    
  
But then, this wasn't a fight. This was an entirely different sort of wrestling. Nadia yelped and giggled, and Tamar had her hands pinned in a matter of seconds. They grinned at each other, waiting. As usual Tamar was the quicker, the more forward of the two. Sometimes she couldn't resist playing. She felt Nadia's quick pulse beneath her palms. Her eyes were sparkling and she bit her lower lip.   
  
"Well?" Nadia demanded, finally. She looked up at Tamar with a smile and a slight flush in her cheeks, eyes sparkling. "What are you going to do now?"   
  
"Make you wait for our wife," Tamar said. "Is it really right for us to—"   
  
"Shut up, Tams."   
  
Tamar leaned down to kiss her. After a moment she released Nadia's arms, and Nadia tugged Tamar closer—   
  
A knock at the door interrupted them.   
  
The kissing came to an abrupt halt, Tamar putting a few inches between their lips. Nadia sighed. Tamar didn't, but she echoed the sentiment internally.   
  
"I'm busy!" she called, turning toward the door.   
  
"I didn't ask!"   
  
Tamar swore. Many people could be reasoned with or intimidated. Zoya Nazylensky was not many people. And, yes, in full fairness Zoya herself would not be at the door if the news—whatever it was—could be entrusted to anyone else.   
  
Tamar stood and pulled on her trousers as she approached the door. She wasn't shy about being seen in the same undershirt she had worn to bed. It covered all the fun bits. A quick exchange with Zoya confirmed what Tamar had suspected: she was needed with the Triumvirate in five minutes. Tamar accepted the information. It was hardly a surprise Ravka had a new disaster to face.   
  
She closed the door and went to put on a shirt. When Tamar looked back to Nadia, she saw her wife pouting at her.    
  
"It can't wait," Tamar reminded her. If it could, it would wait for the gorgeous, only mildly sulky woman of Tamar's dreams.    
  
"I know that."   
  
She kissed Nadia. "I'll make it up to you."   
  
"You'd better," Nadia said. "You're not my only wife, you know!"


	7. Jesper - Sparring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has [some accompanying artwork](https://fricklefracklefloof.tumblr.com/post/628211742739169280/whats-jespers-favorite-food-for) by FrickleFrackleFloof!

Open spaces were hard to come by in the Barrel, but Inej knew a factory in the Manufacturing District that had shut down just a few days ago. It still had machinery on the floor. Jesper followed her through to an empty storeroom with space enough for them to move freely. High windows let in enough morning light to see clearly. The scuffed floor was melancholy in its own way. Someone tried very hard to make this business work.

Now it was a spacious room with a couple of Dregs.

“You’ve got to get in close to me.”

Jesper didn’t see anything special in his skill in a fistfight. He just swung and kept swinging. He did what made sense in each moment. When Inej asked him to teach her how to fight, Jesper had to think about it. His mind didn’t know how to fight—it didn’t need to. His body knew perfectly.

Looking for a way to help Inej, he had asked her to fight him. Immediately, Jesper spotted Inej’s problem. She wanted distance between them.

“Go for the weakest spots. You don’t have to stay close, but you have to get close enough to punch my ear or knee me in the love nuggets.”

Inej twisted up her face—at the term, not the thought of being close to him, he hoped. He didn’t smell that bad!

“Come on,” Jesper said. “Just pretend. Don’t actually hit me. You practice hitting and I’ll practice blocking.”

He knew Inej had a well-earned reputation as a deadly ghost of a girl. She came and went unseen. Sometimes she left a trace, sometimes she left a body, sometimes she stole a secret. But she was weak as a brawler. 

Inej threw a punch, stopping shy of Jesper’s ear. Jesper knocked her hand back.

They fell into a pattern for a few strikes, but instinct kicked in with quick motion and his hand closed around Inej’s wrist. She froze, eyes wide and panicked. Jesper released Inej, took a step back, gave her space. He didn't want to. Jesper's instinct was to comfort a friend when they were visibly upset, get in beside her and put an arm around her shoulders so she knew it was them against the world... but that wouldn't help.

He had been so focused on not hurting her physically, he had done something far worse.

“You okay, darling?” Jesper asked, gently.

Inej took a shaky breath and kneed him in the upper thigh, then whirled away.

“Go for the weakest spots,” Inej repeated back to him with a sly smile.

Jesper laughed. “Thanks for doing… not that. Up for another round?”

She was.

It was meant to be practice for Inej, but Jesper found himself challenged, too. He was careful not to grab her again, even as instinct made him respond with equal force—she didn’t hit hard, so neither did he. The Barrel wouldn’t show Inej kindness, but nor was that reason enough for Jesper to bully her. Besides, he was sure Kaz would want him to help her out.

He lost track of how long they practiced. Inej was a quick study and already visibly more comfortable getting close—maybe to him, maybe in general. It hadn’t changed how Jesper felt about Inej, only reminded him why he had such admiration for her. He had seen how scared she was. And here she was, carrying on like it was nothing!

As they left the building, he asked, “Do you want to have lunch with me?”

Inej hesitated.

So he wheedled: "Come on, I'm buying! I want to try this place by Fifth Harbor. It's not work, I promise."

And it wasn't. He brought her to a middling tourist sort of restaurant where they sat at a corner table, Inej nursing a cup of tea and Jesper being none too shy with his lager as they made awkward conversation.

"Can I ask you something personal?" Jesper asked, fairly certain he was already about to. "Do you believe in soulmates?"

Inej seemed the likeliest of all the Dregs to believe. Jesper knew she had faith, but whether that extended from the Saints to something as frivolous and monumental as soulmates, he didn't know. He had always linked the two in his mind, even though in years of fidgeting through church beside his da, he had never once heard the priest mention soulmates.

Maybe he missed it in all the fidgeting.

For a long moment, she trained her dark eyes on him, and Jesper felt her evaluating him.

"Yes," she said, finally.

"Have you met yours?"

"You weren't exaggerating when you said this was personal, Jesper."

"Hey," he said with a grin, "you can't count on me to be timely or quiet, but you can count on me to be honest!"

Inej responded with a smile that wasn't quite happy. It was a smile painted over layers and layers of something else, a smile-shaped not-smile thing. Maybe he would have asked about it, but before he got the chance they were interrupted by a waitress delivering their lunch. So he could tell himself that was why he didn't ask after Inej's unsmile. Instead, he dug into the delicious mess in front of him.

"I don't know how you can eat that," Inej said.

"Easily," Jesper said, licking sauce off his thumb. Sure, he loved Kerch waffles. Sometimes a guy needed variety, though, and that was where the patatje oorlog came in, a mess of onions and sauces on top of chips still hot enough to singe his tongue. The stuff of dreams, truly.

Inej shook her head. "Imagine if your soulmate saw you eating like that," she teased. 

"I like to think he would find it manly and impressive."

She laughed. "I hope you find him and I hope he thinks so."

Jesper sighed, taken by a momentary gloom even a delicious mess of snacks couldn't lift. "I know who he is. And I don't think he likes me much."

"You know?" Inej asked.

Jesper nodded, his mouth full. It hadn't been obvious at first. He knew his soulmate was Kerch, from Ketterdam, someone who had been here during the Queen's Lady plague. It would have hit hardest in the Barrel—he remembered his dream of bodies loaded onto boats. The fog and coffee dreams had been vague, but what really stood out to Jesper was the smell of wood shavings, the favor Kaz showed his cane of Eames ironwood. It had been Jesper's first introduction to Kaz, that cane arcing through the air to crack down on one of the boys who'd jumped him. He never did find out which gang had been trying to send him a message that night. Kaz had brought him back to the Slat and Jesper never left.

"I thought it would be easy," he said. "I always imagined my soulmate would like the same things I like."

"You wanted it to just happen," Inej said.

"Yes! I didn't think it would be… work."

The smile Inej gave him felt like the breath before bad news.


	8. Jesper - Campfire Tales

If Jesper never saw snow again, it would be too soon. They had been marching days through the Fjerdan snow without so much as a filthy singalong. There had been a loose thread on Jesper's cuff and now it was half-unpicked. He tried to remember to tuck it into his glove and not touch it, but the less logical part of his brain kept remembering he had something to do, and taking it out to pick at the stitches.  
  
When the dark and cold set in, the six of them huddled close to their campfire, gnawing through rations of crackers and salted cod. Tomorrow would bring them closer to Djerholm, and enough tomorrows and they'd be there, and call Jesper crazy but he couldn't wait for their impossible, probably deadly heist to truly start. He hated hiking. It was dull and repetitive, left his body slightly tired and his mind buzzing and bouncing.   
  
"Do Fjerdans believe in soulmates?"   
  
That was enough to pull his attention. Nina had asked. She sat across the fire from Matthias, beside Inej. They were the only two sitting close to one another. Everyone else spaced themselves like the wind needed a place at the fireside. Jesper wouldn't have minded someone to sit close to him, but that wasn't Kaz's way.   
  
Matthias took a long moment before answering. "Of course we do. Some are drawn by Djel from the same waters and made to reunite."   
  
"Only some?" Inej asked. She sounded genuinely curious. Jesper was, too—did that mean the Fjerdans believed some people  _ didn't _ have soulmates? He glanced at Kaz, then back to Matthias.   
  
Maybe having no soulmate wasn't the worst thing.   
  
"He means Grisha," Nina said, "don't you, Matthias? Grisha don't have soulmates."   
  
"Soulmates are a way we are all connected to the world. Unnatural people, those not made by Djel—"   
  
"Well," Jesper interrupted, "that all sounds intriguing." Because he understood now. Matthias wasn't suggesting some people had no soulmates: he was suggesting some people had no souls.   
  
Strangely he wasn't all that keen on listening to another lecture about how he wasn't really a person. Call him crazy, but he'd rather not. A part of him wondered whether Matthias genuinely even believed all that stuff. Whatever had gone on between him and Nina, thinking she was innately subhuman probably gave him some comfort. That was more kinds of twisted than Jesper cared to unravel.   
  
Matthias glared at him and Jesper replied with a wide grin.   
  
"Whatever helps you sleep at night," Kaz rasped, poking at the fire. The logs shifted and spat, crackling out sparks, and Jesper wondered if Kaz was intentionally goading Matthias or, maybe, if he said that for Jesper.    
  
"You wouldn't understand, demjin," came Matthias's unsurprising response.    
  
"Probably not," Kaz agreed.   
  
He had never shared his soulmate dreams, at least not with Jesper. He had them, though. He must have.   
  
"I knew someone at the Little Palace, a Corporalnik who believed soulmate dreams must register a measurable change. She was studying the brain. Ultimately she wanted to quantify dreams."   
  
Matthias, scowling, said, "Some things were not meant to be known."   
  
"Maybe some people are meant to remain ignorant," Nina retorted, "it's hardly the same."   
  
"If Corporalki can understand dreams," Wylan asked, "can they change them? Or change someone's fate?"   
  
"Potentially, I suppose," Nina said. "I don't think that was her goal, though. She only wanted to understand, or to prove it. All of it was theoretical, of course. She would have needed a way to measure souls."   
  
She said it like a joke, but Jesper noticed that look on Wylan's face.   
  
"What are you so miserable about, merchling? I thought the Kerch didn't even believe in soulmates."   
  
Wylan blushed, opened his mouth, closed it. He tried again: "It's late. I'm going to bed. Good night."   
  
Jesper would have laughed, but that just meant he had a sulky merchling in his tent. That first night, he had objected. Why did he have to share with Wylan? Kaz had only asked if Jesper would prefer to share a tent with Helvar—Kaz didn't trust the Fjerdan and couldn't count on Wylan to watch him. Jesper wanted to share a tent with Kaz, but knowing Kaz trusted him was a balm. As he had no desire to play Grisha and Druskelle with the big guy, Jesper resigned himself to Wylan.   
  
To the kid's credit, he attempted to stick up for himself the next day, when Jesper asked to swap with Kaz on the grounds that Wylan farted in his sleep. Wylan had retorted that Jesper did, too—and he snored like a carthorse. It was a halfway decent retort, and Jesper resented Wylan for using it.   
  
"You know how the Kerch are," Nina said, her voice almost lowered, "maybe his soulmate's poor."   
  
"Nina," Inej objected.   
  
Jesper didn't have to ask. He knew how Inej felt. Sometimes, he wondered if she had figured out the truth of him and Kaz. Was it strange for her? He had heard of people with multiple soulmates, but as much as he liked Inej, Jesper knew she wasn't his. Then again—he looked at Nina's arm tucked around Inej. The smaller girl was friends with nearly everyone. One of her many gifts.   
  
"Some things aren't polite to talk about," Matthias said.    
  
Sure, but when had that ever stopped them?   
  
It was bad enough that Matthias's words made Jesper consider what he was thinking. Worse was what he found. Ever since Kaz revealed his true identity, the merchling had bothered Jesper. He realized now that the flute in his dreams had meant Wylan. But… who was Wylan to Kaz? What did he have to do with Kaz and Jesper being meant for each other?   
  
Wylan was the first to call it a night, but the others soon followed. They were trapped between one long day of hiking and another long day of hiking, and all of them needed the rest. Jesper only lost his two outer layers of clothing before wriggling into his bedroll. It wasn't long enough. He usually slept curled up on his side anyway, but now that he  _ had _ to sleep that way or stick his shoulders and chest out of the bedroll, he wanted nothing more than to stretch out on his back. He glanced over at Wylan. In the dim tent, Jesper could just make out Wylan's curls poking out of the bedroll.   
  
"Jesper?"   
  
"Be quiet."   
  
"But you—"   
  
"I'm trying to sleep."   
  
That was harsh. Jesper didn't mean to sound that way. The problem was, there was only one role he saw Wylan playing between himself and Kaz, and that was  _ obstacle _ . Why did Kaz like the kid so much? Jesper had barely believed his ears on the  _ Ferolind _ when Kaz praised Wylan's drawing. He had been even more incredulous to hear the merchling refuse the compliment. Who did that? Was he so used to praise he casually rejected it like he had his daddy's money?   
  
That was probably it. No one in Ketterdam would honestly tell the son of a merchant house that he wasn't any good—even when he wasn't. Not that Wylan's drawing were bad. He just wasn't cut out for Barrel life. His drawings and face were pretty enough.   
  
And that made it worse! Jesper understood why Kaz was so drawn to Inej. She wasn't just a good friend and a better spider, and one of the deadliest creatures in Ketterdam. She was a good person. He didn't know how anyone managed  _ that _ in the Barrel, but she did it. Inej made sense. Wylan Van Eck? Why was Kaz wasting all that time on Wylan Van Eck?   
  
Jesper fell asleep with a sour taste in his mouth.    
  
When he woke up the following morning it was still there, worsened by a bad dream. It wasn't often he saw Kaz's violent past, Kaz's losses, but what he saw last night must have been from a job that went wrong. It had been vivid as any, both the blows landing and the rich carpet Kaz focused on as they did.   
  
The sour taste only worsened when he realized the other side of the tent had been packed up and left empty.


	9. Interlude: Sacred is Ghezen

Across the years, a single sensation remained consistent throughout Jellen's dreams: he woke to the lingering scent of old books. He knew they were not just any books. With neither evidence nor reason, Jellen simply knew this was the scent of a hymnal.   
  
He always found peace in the church. At thirteen, Jellen served Ghezen not only through preparing to inherit his father's businesses, but by cleaning the church after services. It was more than just the calm of the quiet building after everyone had left, more than the scent of the hymnals he held to his nose and deeply inhaled before replacing them in the pews. There was something soothing in the way the light tumbled gracefully from those thin, tall windows, and there was beauty in the stained glass. Yet something more than that spoke to a deep place inside Jellen. Something told him this was right.   
  
He was strange, but his devotion to Ghezen meant his strangeness earned praise for his father. What a good son, what a respectable Kerch boy he was raising. Jellen wasn't  _ actually _ different from any other boy. He had his weaknesses and diversions. He had been known on occasion to neglect his studies when there was a chance to kick a ball around with the other lads, or to swipe the last teacake when his sister's back was turned. How many tiny sins one could blot out through devotion!   
  
That was about the time Jellen realized his dreams were different from those of the other boys. When they confided in one another, they spoke of pieces of embroidery or mixed pigments, floral window boxes, a cat curled up to sleep at the end of a bed. One boy claimed too eagerly that he had seen the reflection of the girl meant for him, hastily retreating when pressed and said he had seen her reflection  _ in water _ . Jellen's dreams showed him swirls of thin metal half-filled with brightly colored glass, hummed the tunes of hymns in a thousand voices. The others spoke of the girls who created those embroideries, slept in rooms past those window boxes, kept those cats. Jellen knew his dreams were not of the artisan behind those stained glass pieces or the singers of the hymns.   
  
Monasteries welcomed the younger sons of merchant houses often enough. What better sign of the wealth that measured Ghezen's favor than to give it up? Not all of it, of course, simply the smaller cut of a family's favor set aside for extraneous children. The sacrifice was a gesture, not insanity. Jellen would have made a fine monk and been happy at it, but he was not a younger son, and that fate was not meant for him.    
  
So Jellen Radmakker would serve Ghezen on the more traditional road of industry, integrity, and prosperity.    
  
He became a great man of business. His fortune increased steadily, his family's coffers straining under millions of kruge. The annual earnings of the Radmakker family were impressive--a sign, truly, of Ghezen's favor. Jellen was not known to take risks, and if anyone looked closely, they would see that he was actually a conservative businessman who began wealthy enough that a small earning to his eyes would have fed whole neighborhoods of Ketterdam for a year, paid school fees, put shoes on their feet, and comfortably left enough for Jellen to be deemed a success. Not that it actually  _ did _ , that money went to the Radmakker household, several bank accounts, business ventures, and the church, as was Ghezen's will.   
  
As Jellen grew older, he continued to put his time into the church. No matter what was happening elsewhere, Jellen attended services twice a week, tithed to Ghezen, and put his time into additional service. No matter how industrious and prosperous he was at his work, no matter his integrity, Jellen always found that greater peace alone in the church, with the hymnals and the elegant stained glass window.   
  
He never married because he was not meant to. Jellen knew fated partners were not always of great import, but who was he to deny the whispers of Ghezen in his mind? Besides, he had no desire to marry. He had no desire for any of it. As a young man, he had always been bored by the bits of books where the boy and girl became silly over one another. He felt no draw to long walks with girls, or boys for that matter; never wanted to woo or be wooed. He never wanted to kiss or be kissed, either.   
  
He had thought the mattered settled enough in his more mature years. He discussed it only once, shortly after the disastrous auction of Kuwei Yul-Bo's indenture.   
  
After the smoke had cleared, once the gossip of a Councilman's arrest grew stale in the long lull before his trial and the echoes of the plague bells had faded, Jellen was surprised when his sister asked him, apropos of nothing over an otherwise pleasantly quiet Sunday dinner, "Are you inclined toward men, like the Van Eck boy? Is that why you never took a wife?"   
  
Jellen did not so much as pause. He was midway through slicing a bite from the slice of roast on his plate, and he fit his words in before taking that bite: "It's hardly appropriate to refer to a Councilman as a boy."   
  
Even if he was one.   
  
"You're evading the question, Jellen."   
  
"Yes, Mother."    
  
She truly did sound like their mother when she grew impatient. He never tired of teasing her about it.   
  
"Are you?" she persisted.   
  
"I am not drawn toward men," Jellen said. He was not actually drawn toward anyone physically. In his heart, he felt only the pull of service to Ghezen.   
  
It meant that in the long run, the Radmakker business empire would perhaps collapse, perhaps bequeathed to the church when the last two Radmakkers passed. Distant cousins would spring from the woodwork if Jellen sought a Radmakker heir. It didn't seem important. He and his sister would live in comfort. And after...   
  
Well, who was he to question what was meant?


	10. Jesper - Bet on It

When Jesper was young, he often struggled to sit still in the classroom. His first term at primary school had seemed good to Jesper—yes, it had a lot of boring classroom time, but he made fast friends with the other students. When his teacher sent him home with a letter, he thought nothing of it. He wasn't curious enough to read the letter and didn't realize what it was until his da asked. Shouldn't they be seeing his first-term marks soon? Still Jesper didn't understand to worry until he saw the expression on Da's face.   
  
"I don't understand, Jes."   
  
Jesper fidgeted. "What does it say?"   
  
He had to answer a whole host of questions. What was class like? What did he do? Did he always do as the teacher said? Well, did he try? Hadn't he said the teacher trusted him to help with chores around the classroom?    
  
Grimly, Colm nodded. "We'll get this sorted."   
  
"But what did it say?"   
  
"It says you're struggling learning to read and you don't pay attention to your teacher."   
  
"That's not true!" Jesper objected. He was a good reader!   
  
His teacher attended the same church as the Faheys. That Sunday, after services, Colm approached Jesper's teacher to ask how his son could be a struggling reader. He read fine at home.    
  
The next term wasn't easy for Jesper or Colm as they worked at finding ways for Jesper to sit still through class. It turned out that, albeit inadvertently, he actually had been ignoring directions. He struggled with something so… well, dull. If he had written the sentence out once, why did he need to write it twice more? Obviously he already knew how and it was time to start scribbling dragons in the margins.    
  
All those memories returned to Jesper as their little crew settled in on Black Veil.    
  
Matthias objected, of course. He called it disrespectful.   
  
"Do you have a better suggestion?" Kaz asked, his eyes flashing darkly. "Then don't run your mouth."   
  
He took Wylan with him to retrieve their provisions.    
  
"Why him?" Jesper asked.   
  
"He's not half-dead, stupidly noble, or loose with his tongue," Kaz said. "And he speaks fluent Kerch."   
  
Jesper told himself Kaz was hurting with Inej gone. They all were. But it stung, and the apologetic look Wylan gave him stung worse. Was  _ that _ the meaning of the flute in his dreams? Was it warning him he was losing his soulmate to a flautist?   
  
He could do nothing as Wylan Van Eck took Jesper's place as Kaz's second. He couldn't blame Wylan, though. He wanted to, but Wylan hadn't been the one to tell about the Ice Court job and let the news get back to Pekka. And… Jesper sort of liked Wylan. The younger boy had stood next to him every night on the  _ Ferolind _ . That wasn't nothing. It was weird, but it wasn't nothing.   
  
Later, when Matthias was trying to coax Nina into eating; Kuwei had staked out a corner to keep his sharp, watchful eyes on the others; and Kaz was poring over a map, the wheels of his fearful mind at work, Jesper went outside.    
  
"You really have to stop this, you know," Jesper said, plunking down beside Wylan. He handed him a piece of bread and cheese.   
  
"Thanks."   
  
"It's not proper," Jesper persisted. "Being so cheerful. It's downright unseemly."   
  
"What is?"   
  
"Being so cheerful," he repeated. The merchling must have been distracted. "It's not very Kerch of you."   
  
Wylan replied with a weak smile. "I'm worried about Inej."   
  
"I think we all are," Jesper said. Wylan barely  _ knew _ Inej—but that wasn't fair. He reminded himself that Wylan knew her well enough to care. Caring about Inej was easy.    
  
"He…" Wylan began. Then he looked away. He set aside his bread and cheese carefully, instead picking idly at pebbles in the ground.   
  
_ Oh. Right. _ Jesper thought again of Vellgeluk. Of Wylan's father, who had gone from tutors to tonics to beatings. He thought about Colm, sitting with Jesper to keep him on task with his assignments even when he was half-asleep himself.   
  
"He won't hurt Inej."   
  
"You don't know him."   
  
"I know Kaz," Jesper replied, drumming on his knees. "Any harm he does to her, Kaz will pay him back ten times over."   
  
"I," Wylan began. Then cut himself off again.    
  
"Is he your soulmate?" Jesper blurted.   
  
Wylan gave him a strange look, so surprised all the seriousness had drained from his face. "His". From Kuwei's face, slapped over Wylan's. "My father?" he asked.   
  
Jesper couldn't help it. He burst out laughing. He had so needed a laugh and trust the merchling to provide one!    
  
"Kaz!" Jesper said. This time, it didn't hurt to say—probably because it came on the heels of,  _ is my father my soulmate _ .    
  
"Kaz?" Wylan couldn't hide his surprise, or his blush. "No!"   
  
Jesper blew out a breath, more relieved than he wanted to admit. He believed Wylan, which meant he believed Wylan wasn't there to take his place. Besides, he was quiet, that was true. Kaz probably just didn't want to talk. And maybe he was angry with Jesper, but that was temporary. Once they had Inej back, safe and sound… Jesper and Wylan could be friends. Maybe not more. Oh, Wylan was gorgeous, but Jesper didn't want a night's tumble with him. He thought he would prefer to be friends. That lasted.   
  
He tilted his head. "You know… I had a hard time in classrooms. It's a lot of sitting still. Not exactly my specialty."   
  
Wylan nodded.   
  
"So I get what it's like being different."   
  
Wylan shook his head, looking away. "Being different and smart isn't the same as being different and dumb."   
  
"You're not dumb."   
  
Wylan dropped the pebbles in an almost-familiar little rhythm. "I'm not meant for Kaz," he said, "but I know who I am meant for. He thinks I'm useless and stupid. And he's not wrong."   
  
"So that's why you asked if a Corporalnik could change who he is," Jesper realized. He had never heard a story like that. He had heard stories about couples where they mistreated one another, or one did the other wrong, but folks always shook their heads and said,  _ they mustn't have been soulmates _ .   
  
Maybe soulmates rejected one another more often in Kerch.   
  
Wylan just shrugged.   
  
"Well, he sounds like a real skiv if he'd say those things to you."   
  
Wylan looked into the mist, shaking his head again, but there was a smile on his lips. It was the first time anyone had smiled at him in days, and it warmed something inside Jesper.   
  
Encouraged, he pressed, "In fact, if you ever point him out to me, I'll tell him so! I'll even kick his ass if you want me to."   
  
Wylan pressed a hand to his mouth, but he couldn't stifle his laughter. "You'd do that for me, huh?"   
  
Jesper nodded.    
  
"You'd kick his ass?"   
  
"Bet on it," Jesper said, encouraged by Wylan's grin. "You just say the word."   
  
He didn't get the joke, but he loved watching Wylan laugh himself almost to tears.


	11. Wylan - A Little Comfort

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has [some accompanying artwork](https://fricklefracklefloof.tumblr.com/post/628211742739169280/whats-jespers-favorite-food-for) by FrickleFrackleFloof!

_What good is a sharpshooter without his guns._  
  
Kaz's words echoed in Wylan's mind, and along with them, everything they had taken from Jesper. He had been, for one shining moment, happy. Had Kaz raised his hopes just to hurt him? Or had Jesper been too eager to read into any hint of kindness from Kaz?   
  
Wylan hated watching the delight on Jesper's face blink out. He remembered feeling the same way himself—parties to which he was issued an invitation but not permitted to attend, even his father's dinner parties when Wylan was to make himself scarce. Jan would make a point to mention when performers were in Ketterdam or the details of scheduled festivals, only to remind Wylan that he wasn't going, or promise he could and then change his mind. He always changed his mind.  
  
 _You will stay here where you cannot cause trouble._   
  
Wylan knew that pain.  
  
"Jes?"  
  
His father had gone, and Jesper had come up with an excuse to be alone. Maybe Wylan should have respected that, but…   
  
Jesper didn't want him as a fated partner—as a soulmate, Wylan reminded himself. The others used that term. Soulmate. Sometimes Wylan saw glimmers of maybe, but he needed more than a glimmer. He needed more than _I liked your stupid face_. For now, he saw no likelihood that Jesper wanted to be fated for Wylan. That didn't stop Wylan trying. That didn't stop him caring. Jesper was, after all, still meant for Wylan, Wylan's to look after.   
  
"Not the time," Jesper said.  
  
"That's fine. Can I see your arm?"  
  
Jesper glanced at his arm and seemed almost surprised to see blood there. So much had happened, he had forgotten the bullet grazing him in the Boeksplein. He sat and removed his shirt.   
  
Wylan swallowed, trying not to stare. Trying to remember he was here to do a job and that job in no way included admiring Jesper's hypnotic torso. Jesper looked perfect, muscled like a model image in one of the anatomy books Wylan studied for figuring drawing, but… real. The images never had that dusting of hair on their chests or a swirl of a navel, just a 'this is here' dot. The images were not so warm with life, not so marked with small scars and certainly none of them had tattoos, yet—  
  
"Enjoying the view?"  
  
"No," Wylan lied, blushing as he forced his attention to the wound on Jesper's arm. It wasn't bad; the bullet had only grazed him and it wasn't even bleeding anymore. Wylan set one hand on Jesper's shoulder. With the other, he squeezed water from a rag, then began washing away the blood. He tried not to notice how warm Jesper's skin felt against his fingers—not the time!   
  
He had taken a graze like that on the docks before they boarded the _Ferolind_. Wylan remembered being stunned by it. He had never been in a firefight before that day. However tough he thought himself for working with Kaz, working with a _gang_ , he hadn't been. He had been a soft, spoilt kid fancying himself capable. He thought of how the graze had stunned him, and not so long afterward, the shredded mess of his palms being made clean at a touch from Nina. The blisters had formed and split as he and Jesper hacked at the chain to break the winch and trigger black protocol.   
  
"Are you flexing?"  
  
"No."  
  
He had most certainly been flexing.  
  
"It makes you bleed more."  
  
"So we both have healthy bloodflow."  
  
Wylan tried to respond, but only managed a choked noise. Instead, he started wrapping the wound. It was a little injury. Jesper was so brave, always in the thick of a fight, this was probably nothing by his standards. But Wylan could only offer a little comfort. The right amount for a little injury.  
  
"Jes, if you want, I'll say something to Kaz."  
  
"That won't help."  
  
Wylan had tried on Vellgeluk—he had tried. He had pointed out that Jesper made a mistake, but he never would have intentionally put Inej in harm's way. It hadn't made a difference to Kaz.   
  
Wylan doubted he could make a difference to Kaz, now, either. But he would try.  
  
"It wasn't your fault," he said, wrapping a bandage around Jesper's arm. The graze was closed, but it might reopen. Jesper moved around a lot.  
  
Jesper didn't answer. Wylan finished wrapping his injured arm and Jesper slid his shirt on again, taking his time with the buttons.  
  
"When we went for provisions earlier," Wylan began, but immediately saw that didn't help. Even implying Kaz was better not done. Instead of trying to explain, Wylan reached into his satchel for a cone of candied almonds.  
  
Jesper smiled at them and Wylan all but felt his joy.  
  
"Those used to be my favorite!" Jesper said.  
  
Wylan handed the sweets to Jesper. "What's your favorite now?"  
  
He knew Jesper used to like candied almonds. More than once Wylan had woken with no memory of the dream that left a sweet taste on his tongue.  
  
Jesper popped an almond into his mouth and offered the bag to Wylan, who took one as well.  
  
"We should probably share them with the others, right," Jesper said.  
  
"Probably." Wylan didn't want to, though. He was enjoying this too much, this moment with the boy for whom he was meant—but, he reminded himself, Wylan wanted Jesper. That didn't mean Jesper wanted Wylan. He would probably prefer to share the moment and the treat with Kaz.  
  
To Wylan's surprise, Jesper winked at him. "We just won't tell them," he said.  
  
Something in his tone made Wylan blush even as he reached for another almond. 


	12. Interlude: Grace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Though there are likely mistakes, I did my best with the linguistics in this chapter.

Thirteen-year-old Tolya was already half a head taller than his sister, growing by miles each minute. Six months ago, Tamar had been the taller of the twins and Tolya had been graceful. Now Tamar was small and Tolya's hands ended an inch past where he expected them to.    
  
He managed to get an arm around her neck anyway.   
  
They had just left the goats' shed. Snow fell in gentle flurries, almost magical in the evening twilight. It brought to mind a particularly lyrical stanza from an old poem; he sought the precise wording in his mind as Tamar scrabbled at his arm. He almost had it when she twisted her throat into his bent elbow.   
  
Tamar grabbed a quick breath and dropped, rolling herself and her brother both and ensuring she came out on top. Tolya used the momentum to shove her over. They rolled once more in the snow, the cold biting savagely into ears, necks, and any other piece of exposed skin it managed to find. The poems never captured this properly--unlike Tamar, who captured her brother's arm and held it at a harsh angle. He felt the strain. He knew she felt it, too.   
  
"I yield," he told her.   
  
Tamar stood, then helped Tolya to his feet.   
  
It was a foolish time to fight. The snow had come on suddenly and heavily. They wouldn't have gone outside but for the goats. They had been living outside Olyesk, a Ravkan border town, for a few years now. They were close enough for the twins to walk into town for school every day, far enough to keep to their own ways. They were also far enough that if a storm caught them unprepared, they might spend a few days alone.   
  
"Are you in love with Luba?" Tolya said, once they were inside again with a pot of water boiling for tea.   
  
"No," Tamar said. She stripped off her boots and socks. They were soaked through.   
  
Tolya might have understood better if she said yes. There were odes to that sort of thing.   
  
"Then why?" he asked.   
  
"Because kissing is fun," Tamar said, throwing a sock at her brother's head.   
  
It seemed unappealing. Tolya had no interest in kissing girls. Nor boys, for that matter. He had as much interest in kissing a filthy sock. Yet the dreams had started all the same. It was the first time life split Tolya from Tamar. Others had tried. Their schoolmates often separated boys from girls, but neither twin would be recruited into any group that wouldn't welcome the other. Those were friends they didn't need.    
  
The dreams didn't care.   
  
Tolya hadn't wanted them. He knew many who had met and married and loved their soulmates. He had no interest in marrying, just like he had no interest in kissing. He had hoped the dreams would never visit him.   
  
"It'll happen eventually," Tamar said.   
  
Tolya frowned, but kept quiet.   
  
"Or it won't," she amended. "Who cares? It's not like it'll make you stop snoring."   
  


* * *

  
  
Ten years later, during a lull in the chaos of King Nikolai's young reign, Tolya paid a visit to the archives to retrieve Federov's translation of the Composite Treatise Scrolls. They were a little-reviewed collection of centuries-old agreements from back when Shu Han was separate kingdoms. The originals were housed in Ahmrat Jen and the peace bought by Queen Ehri's marriage to King Nikolai was a tenuous one--Tolya would see not a character of those original documents for the foreseeable future.    
  
Federov's translation was so rarely used. Yul-Chuluun's and Chenryshevsky's were preferred, even the de Haas made appearances in broader conversations, but Federov had been one of the earliest to translate the scrolls, certainly the earliest to translate it into Ravkan. There were some in less-used Shu dialects, but Tolya had no access to most of them and wouldn't understand them even if he read them.   
  
So he made his way past the grand, brightly lit library and down into the stacks. The cavernous room held row after row after shelves. The light was less reliable here, certainly less suited to reading. Tolya carried a lantern held aloft to scan the signage.   
  
When he found the right row, he was surprised to find another light, a young woman seated in the middle of the aisle, reading by the glow of her lantern. He needed to get past her to reach the Federov translation. Or rather, he saw when he approached--he needed that book!   
  
"Excuse me."   
  
Now… how to manage this? Tolya knew his approach was not Nikolai's first choice, but what good was a contingency plan if it was empty?   
  
The woman looked up. She was Kaelish if the red curls were anything to go by. They had fallen forward as she read, so now when she looked up at Tolya, she had to rake them back.    
  
"Oh! I'm sorry!" she said. She started scrambling to her feet, kicking the lantern over, caught it before it fell, and yelped Kaelish words he didn't recognize but guessed the gist of.   
  
Tolya crouched in front of her. "May I?" he asked, extending his hand.   
  
She hesitated. Then she gave him her hand, burned where she had touched the lantern glass. Under dire circumstances, Tolya was no Healer. For a little thing like this, he took away her burn easily. She smiled at him before looking to her burn-free palm.   
  
"Thank you."   
  
"It was nothing." Truly, he thought little of it. "But I need that book."   
  
"Oh. Sure." She handed it over, saying, "I'm researching the development of the Ravkan language. The political papers give some of the best representations of use of language across the past centuries because they exist consistently from almost every era. I supplement with diaries where I can, but those are unreliable, whereas political agreements have been written down for as long as we've used written language. Sometimes they even include direct quotations from the negotiations. Those are better than Grisha steel. Um, no offense meant."   
  
Tolya was not even a Fabrikator. Even so, he had heard the expression enough not to take it personally. That was the least of his concerns. Her research sounded intriguing, and already he could think of several other political agreements that might apply.   
  
He hesitated, book in his hand. He should take it and go.    
  
"What about religious texts?" he asked.   
  
The woman shook her head. "No, liturgical Ravkan is functionally a unique language, its use is always deliberate and designed to mimic older usage. They never give me those insights into contemporary colloquial language the way the political papers do."   
  
Tolya looked at the book again. He had what he needed… but he found the woman's research intriguing.   
  
He sat down opposite her.   
  
"Have you tried the Oblonsky record of the border disputes with Fjerda?"   
  
She knew her material well. Tolya learned a few things from her and taught her a few things, their conversation carrying along merrily.    
  
When they emerged from the archives, several hours had passed. The library was deserted. The stars glittered in sharp contrast against the sky, and Tolya recited a line of poetry he had always liked. It avoided the usual cliches: calling the stars jewels or fire. Instead, it called them the broken places of the sky.   
  
"The Nigüülseluur," the woman said.    
  
Tolya smiled at her. It wasn't even a linguistically appropriate word, the suffix used to suggest a noun was the means by which something was achieved--writing with a pen, sewing with a needle.    
  
"Kir-Bayar's inappropriate use of a derivational suffix is inspired," she said. "As it's done with clear understanding, of course. There's a shockingly thin line between brilliance and accidents."   
  
Of course, Tolya thought, a thing could not be achieved by grace. Though he could not recall why.

* * *

  
  
The next time Tolya encountered the young linguist, he introduced himself.   
  
"Oh, of course!" she said. "Last time I started on about my research--did you get what you wanted from the Federov translation?"   
  
But on their third meeting, he learned her name was Riona.   
  
"Are you in love with her?" Tamar asked.   
  
"No." Tolya wasn't sure what  _ in love _ would even feel like.   
  
The twins sat together, cups of tea between them. There was something to be said for palaces. They were excellent places to find libraries and comfortable armchairs. Though Tamar and Tolya were both busy during the day and often into the night, when they had time, there was always a space to be found for them to share their free moments.   
  
Considering her question, he amended, "Possibly," then made a note of which page he was reading. It was a new translation of one of the old epics. Many of the translator's choices were unusual ones. Next time he saw Riona, he meant to ask her opinion.    
  
He imagined kissing Riona the way Tamar kissed Nadia. The idea didn't repulse him, but it didn't appeal, either. He liked her, though, in a different way to how he liked other people. It was simply not that way. He liked her in a way that made the thought of discussing linguistic nuance with her spark a happiness in him more than what happiness usually felt like. When they were together, he felt questions answered before they were asked, saw colors freshly brightened like a coat of dust had been wiped from the world.    
  
"Is she the first person you want to share something new with?" Tamar asked.   
  
Tolya knew she was. Like the translation he was reading now--he knew she would be interested. Or when he had recently encountered two older texts, nearly contemporaries of one another, with outright contradictions.   
  
"We share similar interests," Tolya said.   
  
"Do you look for reasons to see her?"   
  
Again he thought before answering. It was true that Tolya sometimes directed his reading in a certain direction in hopes of encountering something new, giving himself a reason to seek her out.    
  
He didn't say anything, but knew he gave the answer away.   
  
"And when you're around her, how do you feel?"   
  
"Normal," Tolya said. Perhaps it was strange. He didn't mind being different: he was who he was, and he found no shame in that. Sometimes, it was simply easier not to be conscious of himself. "She has something vital in her, like sunlight in spring."   
  
Tamar grinned wickedly. "Almost like you were meant for each other."   
  


* * *

  
Riona Lewis wasn't especially surprised when Tolya asked her to walk with him. Their time together usually occurred in libraries, moving at times when their conversations ran long enough that they opted to share a meal rather than leave a conversation--or better, a debate!--unconcluded. Today they walked through the woods. She didn't mind. She liked watching the snowflakes land on her wooly blue gloves. Tolya seemed immune to the cold, as with most external stimuli.   
  
They walked quietly for a while. Riona was, admittedly, disappointed. Her attempts to engage in conversation had been ill-received. That rarely happened with Tolya.   
  
"Is this a trick?" she asked.   
  
"Why would it be a trick?"   
  
Riona shrugged. How was she to know? She rarely played tricks. They simply arrived. She tilted her head up to look at the clouds through the pine boughs, blinking as snowflakes drifted toward her eyes. With her gaze upturned, she tripped over a stone in the path.   
  
Tolya caught her before she hit the ground and asked, "Did you ever write the Istorii Sanktya on your leg?"   
  
That was a very strange question.   
  
"Yes."    
  
She had done it when she was a child. They gave her comfort. Words were her friends when she had none, spoke to her when no one else cared to. Words, written down, told her the secrets everyone else knew. They put sense to the world. They held her when she could bear neither to be touched nor to be alone.   
  
So she had written the words so she was not alone, or friendless, or ignorant. She knew they must be secrets, so wrote them on her thighs until she barely recognized her own skin without ink. These days she no longer did.   
  
"Oh," she realized. She gripped her elbows; this was not a time worth discussing. "Chenryshevsky's use of auxiliary verbs in the gue tense is borderline infuriating."   
  
"You are angry with me."   
  
"I am not." She was angry. He was here. That did not mean she was angry at him.    
  
"Why?"   
  
She trusted him, really. Tolya was very honest, not only in that he never intentionally misled her, but in that he meant what he said. Few people said what they meant. She liked him, because he was smart and interesting and moral, and she liked being around him because he made her feel normal.    
  
And the only way he could know about the words was to speak to someone who knew her as abnormal.   
  
"Not because you listened. Because you cared."   
  
"That doesn't help."   
  
"You would only know about the Istorii if someone told you. You couldn't stop them telling you, but why did you care? You already know me."   
  
"No one had to tell me," Tolya said, with guilelessness in his voice. "I dreamed you."   
  
Riona scrutinized his face for signs of a lie, though despite the fact books claimed it was visible, she had never 'seen' a lie.    
  
Well then.   
  
"Were you the boy who made the tea at sunrise?"   
  
Neither was particularly expressive. That was something else she liked about Tolya: not everyone understood the difference between not showing feelings and not having them.   
  
"Chenryshevsky's wording has accurate meaning," Tolya said.   
  
"It communicates the meaning, aye, but not the nature of the language."   
  
They continued their walk, their discussion along with it.


	13. Wylan - Sound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has [some accompanying artwork](https://julescries.tumblr.com/post/628243690908991488/my-art-for-the-fic-sweet-indifferent-dreams-by) by JulesCries! 
> 
> CW for emotional abuse (Jan Van Eck)

The morning after Inej returned to them, Wylan stepped into the mist surrounding the tombs on Black Veil. He felt like he ought to be sneaking, but remembered what Kaz had said and tried not to seem conspicuous. There might be a reason he was leaving. Maybe he needed some fresh air or to make use of that gnarled tree at the far end of the island—he found it distasteful to relieve himself on gravestones. Wylan left the tomb trying to look non-sneaky and purposeful.  
  
Though he tried not to show it, he was uncomfortable on Black Veil.   
  
He should have been out of Ketterdam when the Queen's Lady plague hit, but his father believed it wouldn't come to Geldin District. Illness, he said, festered in the slums and the Barrel. Illness was inevitable in those conditions. What reason could Ghezen see in preserving such people? If a life could not be industrious, wherein lay its value? So Jan Van Eck kept himself and his son in Ketterdam rather than leave his businesses. It hadn't been long since his mother died. Wylan would never forget the sight of the bodymen's boats piled with unmistakably human figures wrapped in soiled shrouds. He had seen it from his bedroom window.  
  
Here, staying on Black Veil, Wylan was never far from those memories. No one else seemed bothered. Sometimes he wished he had their strength. Other times, he was glad he didn't. He didn't have it in him to mourn each dead person, but someone should care. His father would sneer at the weakness, but Wylan didn't hate that part of himself. Sometimes his life was nothing but beauty and pain, but art and music and bruises and loathing, and if all he could do was hurt then at least he could on occasion hurt selflessly.  
  
He didn't go far. The morning was still heavy with fog and shadow, and with his luck Wylan would trip and break an ankle. Kaz would never let him hear the end of it. Maybe Jesper, though he was harder to predict these days. Wylan wound around the back of their tomb, and two more for a bit of distance. Only then did he take his flute out from under his shirt. With any luck, the noise would be swallowed up in the fog. There was something ethereal in the notes of a flute, something that seemed drawn from the world and blown back into it. You could mistake the murmur of the water for the sound of a flute.  
  
Wylan hadn't played in months. It was like he hadn't breathed, like he hadn't…  
  
 _—fingers on the handles of his revolvers—_ _  
_ _  
_ _—that sharp, unrestrained laugh—_ _  
_ _  
_ _—not just girls…_  
  
...loved.  
  
Ghezen, he was every sort of fool his father ever claimed, but those dreams had always meant something to Wylan. They felt. They made him feel alive and real when nothing else could. He had loved those pieces of the boy that fate saw fit to share with him. And he had kept them close in the only way he could.  
  
Wylan brought his flute to his lips. The metal was warm from his skin as he blew the first note.  
  
His father did not care for art, but Wylan's work had no subtlety. He had been foolish and young when the dreams started and so Jan could usually determine when Wylan was wasting his time on nonsense.  
  
 _You are unfit for that._  
  
It hadn't seemed right, before. But now Inej was with them again and it was okay to…  
  
Wylan learned to put nothing of his fated partner down in images. He learned not to sketch the grooves or shade the ruddy pink of an old ruin his partner, his _soulmate_ had once played in. His father knew that Wylan believed the boy was Zemeni, and that anything Wylan did to even suggest Novyi Zem was about him.  
  
But, though Wylan could not read, he could do something his father could not. He could listen. He could _hear_.   
  
The tune was one of his favorites. He had been a child when he first began to write it and although he modified it over the years, it never changed at its core. It remained a simple song, a flurry of eighth notes into lower quarter notes, a breath before the notes began to climb again and a mirrored flurry rising…   
  
Music made sense. It was clear and said just what Wylan wanted it to just as he wanted it to, and it seemed to shake the smallness off of him. When he played, he wasn't on a graveyard isle. He wasn't anywhere. The _whereness_ fell away, he didn't have to wonder what he was doing here because there was no here. There were only sounds lighter than air...  
  
Then he heard a twig snap and spun, lowering his flute, gripping it like… what? Like he was going to protect it? Or like he was going to use it to protect himself?  
  
Jesper held his palms up. "Easy, merchling. Hey, I liked that."  
  
What could Wylan say? _It's the sound of your mother's smile._   
  
"You can't really dance to it, though," Jesper added.  
  
Wylan swallowed. "Next time I'll play you something with a beat you can dance to."   
  
Maybe something that didn't have the separate but slowly gathering notes of a rainstorm swallowed in the howl of long winds, something that didn't leap from one clear note to the next in swells of passion and panic. He hadn't understood it until he saw the way Jesper's energy turned—the way it turned every day into a whirlwind of joys, the way Jesper always found something to smile about.   
  
And what happened to Jesper when the wind blew too quickly. When the notes began to step on one another's heels. He had seen it first that night in the Crow Club, though he hadn't at the time understood what it meant. After watching Jesper's impatience on the _Ferolind_ , how eagerly he drew his weapons on Velgelluk, Wylan thought he was beginning to understand—how Jesper could hurt himself. How he didn't just like his revolvers, he almost… needed them.   
  
He hadn't understood that when he wrote the tune. The more he did, the worse it hurt. The more he understood Jesper, the more he felt for him.  
  
"Did you need me?" Wylan asked.  
  
"No."  
  
His phrasing had been accidental, but that still hurt.  
  
"I mean… I wanted to make sure you were okay after seeing your father yesterday."  
  
"I'm fine," Wylan lied. "He didn't know I was there."  
  
 _You probably just scared the hell out of some hapless working girl._ _  
_ _  
_ _You heard right. Stronger than Wylan._  
  
Wylan didn't like Jesper teasing him, but he liked Jesper's attention. He just wished he knew what it meant. Was he supposed to be in on the joke? Did Jesper trust Wylan? His jokes weren't as sharp as they used to be and sometimes it seemed like Jesper pulled out a joke the same way he pulled out a gun—when he was too antsy. When matters were too serious. Sometimes, watching him, Wylan wondered if he could learn to read the cues, if maybe, before Jesper burst out with something, Wylan could take his hand and—  
  
It was only ever a fantasy, of course. Wylan would never take Jesper's hand. Jesper would never want him to. But a boy could dream.  
  
"Are you planning to see your father today?" Wylan asked. Speaking of fathers.  
  
Jesper scrubbed at the back of his neck. "Yeah… maybe tomorrow," he said. "I want things to be a little further along. I want to be able to tell him things are getting better."  
  
Wylan understood. Once the job was over, they would part ways. He would leave Ketterdam and its dangerous wants behind him. Jesper… maybe he would go home with his father, though Wylan wondered if someone like Jesper could be happy doing farmwork. It sounded almost peaceful to Wylan—like scrubbing the dye pots, but with fresh air. Jesper, he thought, would have hated scrubbing dye pots.  
  
"So I know you believe in soulmates," Jesper began.  
  
The earth pitched and Wylan gripped his flute like it could keep him from falling off. They had discussed this before, but this felt… different.   
  
"In…"  
  
"Soulmates," Jesper repeated. "Fated partners, whatever."  
  
Wylan hesitated. Finally, he said, "My father says—"  
  
"I don't give a damn what your father says."  
  
 _Ghezen_. Those words hit Wylan like a bolt of lightning low in his belly. It felt good. So good.  
  
It felt terrifying.  
  
How could Wylan not believe he was meant for someone? And yet, how could he believe? How could he not believe in something greater than his own understanding when he was standing in front of someone as intoxicating, brilliant, beautiful as Jesper Fahey? How could he believe that any greater power would intend someone like Jesper to be with someone like Wylan?  
  
"I…"  
  
Wait—Jesper was asking him. _Jesper was asking him!_ Did that mean… did Jesper know? No—no, he couldn't, because he would have said something.  
  
"I d—"  
  
"Jesper, is that you?" Matthias's voice interrupted.  
  
Jesper scowled. He turned and, looking past him, Wylan could just make out Matthias's solid figure approaching through the mist. The light had changed; it was twilight already. Soon the sun would be up and the mist would thin with what passed for sunshine in Ketterdam, but it wouldn't disappear. Not entirely.  
  
"No, Matthias. I'm a ghost come to haunt you."  
  
"That isn't funny," growled the Fjerdan. It actually was a weak joke by Jesper's standards. "Kaz wants you."  
  
"I'm on my way!"  


"Is Wylan with you?"  
  
Wylan opened his mouth, but Jesper was faster. "Yeah, he just can't answer 'cause his mouth is otherwise occupied!"  
  
Wylan's eyes popped wide. How could Jesper… and yet, of course he would. Of course. Wylan blushed so hot and fast he felt dizzy with it. He didn't even try for words. He knew they would elude him. Instead, he jabbed his elbow into Jesper's belly.  
  
Jesper yelped. Then, straightening up, "Oh, great, now Matthias thinks you bit me. Right in the occupation."  
  
"I would bite you in the occupation," Wylan grumbled, starting back to the tomb.  
  
Jesper followed after him, laughing. Despite himself and the blush warming his ears, Wylan smiled.


	14. Jesper - Happiness

Sensory dreams used to be Jesper's favorites. He woke feeling like he had been with his soulmate, walking beside him in tall grasses and feeling the plants tickle his palms, or sharing a cup of obscenely strong coffee. Now that he had walked beside his soulmate and watched him over a pint of lager, Jesper liked his sensory dreams less.   
  
He sat in the Ketterdam suite at the top of the Geldrenner, looking at the sleeping merchling curled up on the settee.  
  
Jesper touched his lips. Last night's kiss had been… even remembering it made his heart spin. Jesper had only been halfway joking when he tried to coax the merchling into his bed later. Nothing untoward, not with Wylan, just for a cuddle. Wylan had blushed and managed something about not minding the settee.  
  
Maybe Wylan had been thinking of Jesper late at night after all!  
  
Now Jesper watched him sleep and wondered. And wanted.   
  
And hurt.  
  
He sighed and pushed back the covers. Maybe he could convince his da to order breakfast if any of the others were awake. Maybe…  
  
Maybe.   
  
Jesper pulled on his clothes quietly. Wylan seemed like a light sleeper, and if he woke, Jesper would need to face the boy who had kissed fireworks into his brain with a memory of Kaz. He had been young at the time, wading into a clear stream and watching the sunlight ripple over the water. Saints, to think that the Bastard of the Barrel had been _young_! There had been a woman--his mother? Jesper didn't hear her through the dream, but he saw a glimpse of her dark hair and felt Kaz's happiness as he sloshed through the stream, reaching for her hand.  
  
Jesper still felt honored to carry those memories for him, that he should be the one…  
  
And he still wanted to kiss Wylan again. Maybe several more times.   
  
With all that in his head, he still needed to make right with his da. He hadn't spoken to Colm since… since their argument. Not really. The fact that Colm let himself get involved in Kaz's scheme, even if he said he did it for Jesper and the farm, felt like a mix of something like forgiveness and the worst sort of failure.   
  
He meant to speak with his father _eventually_ , but right now, Jesper comforted himself that Nina would probably be with him again, getting him ready to play the role of Johannus Reitveld.  
  
Jesper wasn't the first one awake. Someone was responsible for the pastries--some in flaky triangles, others curled and generously dusted with cinnamon and sugar. He broke open one of the triangles. Apples. He had expected that. Maybe he could take something for Wylan. Would that be too much? Jesper didn't think Wylan would mind, unless he thought Jesper was trying to make up for kissing Kuwei.  
  
Which he absolutely was not!  
  
That was a misunderstanding. And it was behind them.  
  
Bringing someone breakfast was just a nice gesture.   
  
First, though, Jesper detoured to the coffee pot. He was exhausted more than tired, awake just… not ready. Coffee would help. He poured a cup and gulped it; the coffee had been sitting a while, long enough that he could down it without scalding his throat.   
  
Kaz came up to the table and picked up a pastry. He held it, stood still, looking dead into Jesper's eyes. Kaz's eyes were cold. They made Jesper shiver and only mostly with chills. Thoughts bubbled up and burst in Jesper's mind, things he wanted to say, points he wanted to make, questions he wanted to ask, and he couldn't scrape the breath for any of them.  
  
 _I'm your soulmate._ He didn't dare say it.  
  
Kaz stared him down for a long moment, then left the room.   
  
Jesper stood for a few moments, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Did that mean Kaz was still angry with him? Well--yes, definitely. Jesper thought about his dreams, everything he had seen of the boy Kaz used to be. He thought about a different pair of eyes, a pretty blue he could fall into…  
  
"Jesper?"  
  
"Morning, Da."  
  
Not quite who he hoped to see, if Jesper was fully honest. He fidgeted with his buttons. Maybe everything between them was resolved, but… maybe not.   
  
"Everything all right?"  
  
"I kissed Wylan."  
  
"The Shu boy? He seems nice."  
  
Jesper hadn't meant to say that, but he had, and his da hadn't seemed angry. In fact, Colm looked--well, he looked tired, and he looked worried, but he didn't look angry or disappointed. It had been a long time since Jesper could say something this honest without worrying about how he would look. So he did.  
  
"I really like him, but I'm not sure what to do."  
  
"Ah! Well, if you both want to--"  
  
"No!" Jesper said, more desperately than he meant to.  
  
"That's fine, then, but don't let anyone make you feel like you have to--"  
  
"Da, please."  
  
"All right, boy. All right. I just want to make sure you understand--"  
  
"You're punishing me, aren't you?"  
  
"Only a bit."  
  
Jesper shook his head. He deserved it, but that was deeply challenging to admit!  
  
"What's really bothering you?" Colm asked.  
  
Jesper grabbed a cinnamon pastry. Now that the coffee was doing its work, he realized how hungry he felt.  
  
"He's not my soulmate, Da. I really like him. He makes me happy. He's something else, he treats the world like it's a good place and people can just be better than they are."   
  
_He thinks I'm special._   
  
Saints, what sort of a thought was that? But it was the truth. Wylan acted like the world was a good place and Jesper was an above-average part of it. Jesper was used to speaking about himself that way. Hearing it returned was new--and he liked it. If being chosen for a job gave him a spark, this was a roaring fire on a cold night. Wylan would come right out and say that Jesper could do amazing things, said his mistakes weren't so bad, brought him sweets. The way Wylan sometimes looked at Jesper, when he thought Jesper didn't notice, made Jesper feel all kinds of special.  
  
"Your happiness means more than fate."  
  
 _Your happiness means more than fate._ _  
_ _  
_ _Your happiness…_  
  
Jesper had never considered that. It was fate. How could anything mean more than what was fated? Yet his da said--and he believed it, because his da said it--that this meant more. That thrummed in his mind   
  
He held the idea tight in his mind, refusing the other thoughts that pushed at it, even as he carried a cup of coffee and an irresponsible number of pastries back to the bedroom. Wylan was just waking up. He mumbled incoherent but heartfelt gratitude when Jesper handed him the coffee. Jesper left the pastries on an end table, helping himself to one while Wylan shook off sleep. He tried not to be obvious, but…  
  
"Are you watching me?" Wylan asked.  
  
"I'm bored, trapped in here," Jesper huffed. Then, after a minute, "Besides, I really missed that stupid face."


	15. Wylan - Imperious

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has [some accompanying artwork](https://risenbydawn.tumblr.com/post/628202390362996736/imperious-little-merchling) by RisenbyDawn!

Even after they settled into the house on Geldstraat—into _his_ house on Geldstraat—Wylan kept his secret. It didn't need to be told, really. It could wait. There was plenty to do. That first night he had barely slept, laid out on his back and feeling every ache in his bruised and broken body. But the following morning he had received an unexpected visit from a young Grisha Healer indentured to a member of the Merchant Council.  
  
"Didn't you want to leave the city?" he had asked, surprised, as she fixed his face. He was fairly certain that cheekbone was broken and a furious itch overtook him as she did her work.  
  
"This place is as rotten as the next," the Healer replied. "In Ravka…" Then she broke off, shaking her head.   
  
Wylan didn't ask further, just told her, "I'm sorry."  
  
He hadn't considered that Ravka might be bad for Grisha. From what Nina said, it was a haven. But then, Wylan supposed, didn't all homes hold secrets? His life had looked charmed from the outside.   
  
Even now, with his father gone, there were secrets.  
  
Wylan knew he should tell Jesper—but how could he? His home would always be open to Jesper, but although Jesper liked Wylan, they weren't actually soulmates. Weren't meant for one another. How could they be? Jesper would have said something by now. So Wylan kept his mouth shut on the subject. He didn't want Jesper to feel obligated. It was as Wylan had often suspected: he was meant for someone who was meant for someone better.  
  
It was one thing for Jesper to choose to be with someone like Wylan _for now_. Fated partners were forever.  
  
Neither was unhappy with their new situation. As the deeper scars of their pasts slowly made themselves apparent, they helped one another through.  
  
A memory would catch Wylan and he would shiver, like time had tricked him and his father might be around the next corner. Jesper would squeeze his hand and promise him he was okay.  
  
As for Jesper…  
  
"Jes!"  
  
Wylan burst into the dark room, stumbled over the boots tossed aside on the floor.  
  
"Jesper! Jesper!"  
  
Wylan found his shoulder, his eyes almost adjusting, and shook Jesper awake.   
  
The room was filled with the sounds of heavy breathing as Jesper caught up to the moment and realized where he was. Wylan lit the lamp on the bedside table. The light caught in the sheen of sweat on Jesper's face.  
  
When Jesper seemed calm enough, Wylan told him, "You were calling out again."  
  
"What're you doing in my room?" Jesper asked. He had done that a few times in the past week, caught himself in an intimate moment and put his shields up. Wylan felt himself being pushed away and he didn't know why. It was probably just nerves in a new place, the strain of his father's visit.  
  
Wylan wanted to repeat, _you were calling out again_ , but he knew Jesper wasn't ready to talk about it. Rather than push, Wylan did his best to make his soulmate(/boyfriend) smile.  
  
"It's my house so it's my room."  
  
Jesper scoffed. "Imperious little merchling."  
  
Wylan sat up a little straighter and raised his chin, mock-haughty. "I am not little."  
  
"You're even cuter that way," Jesper said.  
  
Wylan blushed, attempting to maintain his affected haughtiness as he did. When Jesper laughed, it was everything Wylan wanted. The thought flickered through his mind to just… _tell him_. What if Wylan had been wrong? Jesper knew he couldn't read and still wanted to be his boyfriend. Maybe he would still want Wylan to be meant for him.  
  
 _It's not about what Jesper wants,_ Wylan reminded himself. People didn't get to pick. That was what "fate" meant. Jesper would have said something if he and Wylan were fated.  
  
If this was going to go on for a while, though, he needed to be honest.   
  
He wanted this to go on for a while. Jesper was troubled, he saw that, but he also saw how Jesper was trying. Maybe it was the lamplight in the dark room making him look so vulnerable, too. Or maybe it just made him look beautiful with those shadows on his cheekbones.  
  
Wylan kissed Jesper. It didn't have the spark of their first kiss, more of a gentle current, the same tenderness in Wylan's hand cupping the back of Jesper's head.  
  
"I can stay," he offered after they broke apart.  
  
Jesper replied with a suggestive grin. " _Imperious_."  
  
Wylan preferred to think of his blush as obliging and designed entirely to satisfy Jesper, rather than a result of embarrassment because he didn't know exactly what Jesper was implying… but he knew he wanted it.  
  
"I can stay until you fall asleep. But only if you say I'm not little!"  
  
Jesper scooted over to make room for Wylan on the bed. The room was impersonal, a guest room that was comfortable enough as long as one didn't mind that any decorations referenced either the three Kerch fishes or the ruby and laurel of the house of Van Eck. Jesper had brought his things from the Slat. He hadn't had much. Still, his few articles of clothing made the room more _his_ than either Wylan or Marya had managed.   
  
He took Wylan's arm and tugged him closer, and Wylan had never really meant to withhold affection until Jesper said he wasn't little.   
  
"When I was a kid," Jesper said, settling against Wylan, "my mother read me stories."  
  
Wylan thought about Saint Hilde, what Jesper had said of his mother there. _She taught me how to shoot._   
  
"My father did, too," Wylan said.  
  
"Well, that's unsettling."  
  
"He wasn't always like that!" But was that true? Wylan wasn't sure anymore. Maybe his father had always been so cold, and Wylan had just been too young to understand. "Besides, if he hadn't sent me away, I never would have met you."  
  
When those big hands closed around his throat on the browboat, Wylan's life had nearly ended—but perhaps it was meant to happen. The thought unsettled him. Was he meant to wash up half-dead at the edge of the canal, spend months flea-bitten and dye-stained, build bombs that would harm people… was he meant for that life? If it was what brought him to his fated partner, was he then meant to be rejected by his father? Was Wylan made to be unloved only to meet the boy he was destined to love who did not love him in return?  
  
If he was meant for Jesper, and only that pain brought them to Jesper, was Wylan meant for hurting, too?  
  
"Will you tell me one of her stories?"  
  
Jesper thought for a moment, then began, "Once there was a boy who ate and ate but could not get full…"  
  
He didn't get to hear the end of the story. Near the middle, Jesper drifted off back to sleep, still sprawled across Wylan's lap. Wylan leaned back against the pillows and closed his eyes.


	16. Jesper - Favorite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has [some accompanying artwork](https://fricklefracklefloof.tumblr.com/post/628211742739169280/whats-jespers-favorite-food-for) by FrickleFrackleFloof!

Wylan was everything Kaz wasn't. Wylan was gentle where Kaz was cold, soft to Kaz's hard edges. Wylan believed and smiled and showed Jesper his vulnerable places. Kaz never would have comforted Jesper after a nightmare. It hurt to admit, but Jesper knew it was true.    
  
And Wylan was prettier than Kaz—not to be petty, but watching Kaz work had stirred a need deep inside Jesper that felt like a desperate tug; watching Wylan work made everything inside Jesper feel warm and molten. Jesper wanted Kaz with pure yearning. He wanted Wylan with the affection he knew he could have. He could sweep the merchling off his feet if he so desired.   
  
He did so desire.   
  
He wanted and could have Wylan… so why wasn't he meant to be with Wylan?    
  
Or maybe he was. He remembered the rhythm with which Wylan had dropped those stones, the almost otherworldly familiarity of his music.    
  
"Hey, Jes."   
  
He realized he had let himself sprawl on the settee and scrambled upright as Wylan deposited two cups of steaming coffee on the table. A loose thread on Jesper's cuff had somehow lengthened. There was no explaining it really.    
  
Wylan kissed him before settling on the floor.   
  
"You can sit with me."   
  
Wylan shook his head. "I want to work on some new sketches," he explained, setting a new sketchbook and tin of pencils on the table. He took a pink paper box from his satchel and passed it to Jesper.   
  
"What did you bring me today?"   
  
Somehow the question was enough to make Wylan blush faintly.   
  
Jesper popped open the box to find a piece of spiced honey cake and candied lemon peel. He popped a piece of honey cake in his mouth.   
  
"Well?" Wylan asked.   
  
"It's good," Jesper said. "But it's not my favorite."   
  
Ever since Wylan brought him the candied almonds on Black Veil, Jesper had refused to disclose his true favorite sweet. Why would he? As long as he kept it to himself, Wylan would keep guessing.    
  
Wylan opened his pencil tin and inhaled deeply. Even over the honey cake and coffee, Jesper caught a clean scent of wood shavings. It hit him hard in the gut.   
  
"Pencils," Jesper said, tapping his buttons.   
  
"I always loved the scent," Wylan said, like he wasn't unraveling everything Jesper had known about himself for the past two years. "It's so… clean, so full of promise."   
  
Jesper nodded. Yes, sure, such a clean smell. Very promising. He drummed on his knees. He needed… something. A hand of cards, a spin of Makker's Wheel, he needed—   
  
"Jesper?"   
  
He didn't think they had gambling halls in Geldin District, didn't think he could afford the buy-in even if they did. Probably just as well he had asked that the Ice Court money be put in his father's name, because the way he felt now, Jesper was pretty sure he could gamble through four million kruge and start digging himself in deep again.   
  
"Breathe," Wylan said. He was beside Jesper now, one palm kissing his cheek, and it was sweet and gentle and everything Jesper loved in Wylan. He wasn't oblivious: Jesper knew Wylan was as tough as anyone, maybe not as tested but as tough. But that wasn't what he gave Jesper.   
  
"You were in Ketterdam during the firepox outbreak."   
  
Puzzled, Wylan nodded.   
  
Wylan, who drank too much coffee and dropped pebbles in that same rhythm, who loved the scent of fresh pencils. Who had been beaten bloody on a rich carpet. Wylan who held Jesper and kissed him and forgave him…   
  
Wylan would probably not find Jesper's enthusiasm toward patatje oorlog either manly or impressive.   
  
"It was always you," Jesper said.    
  
He remembered every harsh look Kaz had given him and every questioning look from Wylan. He remembered the cutting edges of Kaz's displeased tone and the blunted borders around Wylan's. He remembered that night in the warehouse at Fourth Harbor. Kaz hadn't been stubborn that time, he hadn't been refusing Jesper—he just hadn't known what Jesper meant.   
  
"I'm here."   
  
"On Black Veil, you dropped the pebbles," Jesper reminded him. He tapped out the pattern.   
  
Wylan shook his head. "Jelle's Fishes, it's an old Kerch nursery rhyme."   
  
Jesper nodded. Something else the two Kerch boys shared. Wylan liked coffee more than Kaz did, anyway. Kaz only drank it because jurda was too obvious. He preferred to seem like a machine rather than a human pushed past whatever limits he hadn't beaten to smithereens.   
  
"We… we're meant," Jesper said. He swallowed. "You're meant for me."   
  
Wylan went statue-still. Then, slowly, he looked away.   
  
This wasn't how Jesper imagined it. He thought of every time, as a child, he had pictured walking to school with someone beside him, saved half a treat. He could imagine walking with Wylan—but with Kaz? To school? And what would Kaz say if Jesper offered him half a cookie?   
  
"You knew," he realized.   
  
"I—"   
  
"How long?"   
  
Softly, Wylan said, "The whole time."   
  
Wylan had  _ always _ known.   
  
_ I know who I'm meant for. He thinks I'm useless and stupid. _   
  
Jesper wanted to deny it, but he remembered saying those words. He wanted to be angry. It was just another secret. He wanted to say Wylan was shutting him out the same way Kaz did. He was tempted to.   
  
Instead, he asked, "Why didn't you tell me?"   
  
"Because you didn't want me. You didn't want to come to the boarding house for me, or share a tent with me, or work with me in the Ice Court. Things… changed, but—you know what I am, Jesper."   
  
Jesper had spent so long resenting Wylan because of Kaz's interest in him. He hadn't considered that Wylan completely felt that resentment. Frankly, he hadn't thought Wylan noticed him at all until their first conversation on the  _ Ferolind _ .   
  
He still wanted to be mad, but not as much as he wanted  _ Wylan.  _ He wanted the boy who kissed him, sat with him, the boy who made him laugh. He wanted the boy who could buy him the moon but instead brought him a different treat each time, trying to learn Jesper's favorite. How could Wylan understand Jesper as well as he did and still think…   
  
Jesper cupped Wylan's face in his hands.   
  
"I want you."   
  
In that moment, Jesper's merchling looked like he might cry. Jesper hadn't considered what that did to a person: after Wylan's father rejected him, he thought his soulmate had, too.   
  
_ If he hadn't sent me away, I never would have met you. _   
  
What would it have been like for Jesper to be rejected by Kaz if he didn't have Inej as a friend and his da back home? If he didn't  _ have _ a home?   
  
He pulled Wylan into a hug. They hadn't really done enough of this—hugging. Cuddling. There was a lot they hadn't done enough of and plenty of time to get to it, but really, why not start now?   
  
"You know I'm a disaster."   
  
"I don't think you're a disaster."   
  
Jesper smiled. "That's what I like about you."


	17. Interlude: Mature Students

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: this chapter touches briefly on Marya's time in the asylum. It's not the main focus, but it is there; if this is upsetting for you but you'd still like to read the chapter, you can skip to "The university in Ketterdam". All the rest is post-asylum.

"Good morning, Marya!"   
  
Marya hated the girl. She hated her chipper tone. She hated her braid, her smock, her smile. Everything about the girl was despicable.    
  
The girl yanked the curtains open, spilling light across Marya's face without asking if she felt ready to wake.   
  
"How are we feeling today?"   
  
Marya gave her a venomous look.   
  
There had been a time she believed she could keep her dignity in this place. There had been a time she believed she could keep anything at all. That she could do anything of import. She had been wrong, of course. Now she simply tried to ignore the nurse and not care.    
  
Yet, when the supervising medik asked, the nurse reported, "She seems a little more lively today."   
  
"Oh. Well, isn't that lovely, Miss Hendriks?" the medik asked, giving her a smile with too many teeth.    
  
Anger was futile. It burned through her anyway. She loathed this man, his smile, his teeth. Marya understood perfectly the inmates here who shat themselves. She understood why they sat in their own piss. Sometimes she even admired it. Filthy as it was, they clung to the last shreds of their independence. They acted, while all she did was sit and look at this man and hate him.   
  
All she said was, "I'd like to paint."   
  
"Of course," said the nurse, "I'll take you right along."   
  
The paints were cheap, pre-mixed, nowhere near enough colors. There had been a time, a few years ago, when Marya felt grateful for them. They weren't even right. She mixed them herself, as best she could. What was she to do with only one shade of blue? Wylan's eyes were more the color of the sky than a river, yet here was this one dim blue with which she was permitted to express herself.   
  
Marya had almost adjusted to this awful paint. She barely remembered all those colors of pigments in the shop… but she had dreamed something last night. She dreamed of pigments, someone mixing an emulsion from garnet-red powder. Those sorts of dreams had stopped several months before things ended with Jan. Having another reminded her of the breadth of the world.   
  
Time meant little here. Marya had been at Saint Hilde's for some years. Her son would be growing up, would be maybe twelve or fourteen now. Marya didn't know how old she was, either.   
  
She was nearly certain it was three days later that she realized the dream meant she might have a future.   
  


* * *

  
  
The university in Ketterdam offered courses in painting, something Marya had known since she was a girl. She took a few of those classes as a young woman. A year and some after returning to the mansion on Geldstraat, she floated the idea that she might perhaps take a painting class. She'd not had an incident in months. She knew who she was, where she was, and she was ready to stretch her legs some.   
  
"That's a great idea," Wylan said.   
  
Marya, Wylan, and Jesper sat in the parlor, playing a round of three man bramble. Marya had no knack for the game, but she was happy to sit with her son and his man, listening to the sound of crickets chirping through an open window. Hints of breeze puffed into the room now and again. They stirred the stillness of a summer evening.   
  
Wylan and Jesper were engaged in the game.    
  
"I shall be the oldest person there, Wylan," Marya reminded him. "They'll all be your age."   
  
There had been enough of an uphill trek for her rebuilding social connections with ladies her age. In a university class, she would stand out horribly. She wanted to do more without being stared at. Perhaps that was too much to ask.    
  
Looking up from his cards, Wylan suggested, "I could go with you. You wouldn't be alone."   
  
"I don't need a chaperone." She was not incapable.   
  
Jesper sat up a little straighter. "Wylan could enroll as well."    
  
It wasn't the first time he had brought up the matter of Wylan going to the university. Ever since starting classes himself, Jesper had been quite clear that he felt Wylan should do the same.   
  
"I doubt Mama wants that," Wylan said.   
  
"No, no, you must!" Jesper insisted. He had that light in his eyes and Marya stifled a smile. When Jesper looked so eager, the matter was settled, and it was only time until Wylan agreed. "Marya needs you, Wylan. And you wouldn't be a chaperone, you'd be there to learn. That would be fine, wouldn't it, Marya?"   
  
"That would be very nice."    
  
The idea of taking a course with university children was unsettling. She would be strange, out of place. She cared nothing for it if she took a course with her son. Since returning from that place, Marya had played music and gone on walks in the sunshine—and the gloom, this  _ was _ Ketterdam. Her independence over the smallest decisions had been returned to her, from dressing herself to waking when she so chose.    
  
Nothing had compared with seeing her son again. Eight years she lost memory of all wonderful things but her sweet boy, and she never dreamed she would see him again. Now she had seen him become a man, she had listened to him play his flute and fall into impassioned if sometimes clumsy speeches as he took his rightful place on the Merchant Council—and when he stumbled, when he and Jesper had quarreled last year and Jesper stormed out, Wylan had cried with his head in his mother's lap, because he wasn't grown up, not yet, and it was okay not to know what to do. Marya had been there with him, all she had wanted for eight years of her life.   
  
She respected that he had his own life, but it was touching to watch Wylan's resolve crumble in the space of three heartbeats at the thought of taking a university course with her.   
  


* * *

  
Marya made her way alone to the university one morning several months into her course, striding quickly along the rain-slick pathway. On sunnier days, students gathered in small groups discussing their classes or their lives, or whatever matters occupied their young minds. Today the courtyard was mostly empty. A few others hurried on, as Marya did, eager to be out of the rain. The red brick building shone with promise when the sun hit it. It looked imposing today, but she passed gladly under one of several small archways to the main entrance.   
  
In the classroom, she hung her coat and scarf to drip over already sodden newspapers.   
  
"Like hanging corpses," she heard one of the younger students remark. The boy had a penchant for the macabre, always reading one of those gruesome novels that were so popular these days.  
  
Marya set up her paper, brushes, and ink stone at her usual seat.  
  
Another student took the desk hers.  
  
"I see you are alone today, Miss Hendriks. I hope we haven't frightened away your son."  
  
"He's not well this morning."  
  
She hadn't wanted to leave him. The medik said Wylan would recover with time and rest. His chest had been weak since the lung fever—Marya had not known that Wylan ever had lung fever. She wanted to stay, but he kissed her hand and said they had both missed so much already. More reassuring was what she heard Jesper say as she closed the door: "You're staying in this bed if I have to sit on you to keep you here."  
  
In the classroom, she turned to the man beside her. She was not the only older person in the class, after all, and while Wylan had failed to make friends with his peers, Marya had built a slow friendship with Alfonse Naaktgeboren, the other adult student. He was around her age, with a slow smile and threads of silver in his otherwise dark hair. He was a clockmaker and always smelled faintly of woodshavings, and she had noticed that his hands were the capable and callused hands of an artisan, well worth thinking about, if one were to think such thoughts.  
  
Not that Marya had thought such thoughts. But if she had thought them.  
  
"I am sorry to hear that," said Alfonse.  
  
"How are you today, Mister Naaktgeboren?"  
  
"I'm well. I wondered if—"  
  
Before she could hear what he wondered, the door opened and in walked the professor, already in something of a mood. He strode to his desk, leaving hushed conversations in his wake. He was a blizzard of a man but an extraordinary master of Shu brush painting. There was no one better to learn from.  
  
"Like a priest to Ghezen's debtors," Alfonse whispered, leaning close to Marya.  
  
She smiled, but refused to look at him lest that smile bloom into laughter.   
  
Marya remained very conscious of Alfonse throughout class, almost more attentive to the way he ground his ink cake than to her own. She chided herself for it—letting her thoughts wander like a schoolgirl!—but she could not deny there were certain similarities between the lines of his paintings and certain wooden detail work that appeared in her dreams. She was hesitant about such dreams. They had come to Marya sparingly as a young woman and led her to Jan.   
  
She felt somewhat better about Alfonse, though. Jan never would have publicly engaged in an activity at which he did not excel. Alfonse was a moderately talented painter.  
  
Marya was painting a young woman. The painting lacked details, in part because Marya did not have the skill with this technique yet to work fine details well or even decently. Much as she admired the gorgeous brush paintings of blurs of cloud or a feather-fat bird on a slender branch, those things reminded her too much of the views from the window. From before. So she drew a slip of a Suli girl standing on a mostly-unpainted staircase, her bearing akin to a bird in flight.  
  
As the students tidied their things at the end of the class, Alfonse said, "I hesitate to ask under the circumstances, Miss Hendriks…"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"I'm glad we agree."  
  
She smiled. Again. He had that effect on her.  
  
"I'm sure you want to go home to your son, but…"  
  
She did, but she thought again of how he convinced her to come to class today. _We've missed out on so much already._   
  
"He's with family," Marya said. She knew she should have said something about him being an adult, but she never quite saw it that way. He was a Councilman but he was still her little boy.  
  
"Of course."  
  
After a quiet moment, Marya said, "I'm an old woman, Alfonse. I have only so many minutes left."  
  
"And I am an old man," Alfonse replied, smiling, "I have learned to wait."  
  
"Well _I_ have places to be," interrupted someone else.  
  
Somehow, they had forgotten their teacher. Both turned to find the classroom otherwise empty, all but two of the coats gone, the drying rack in the corner sparsely filled with drying paintings. Marya and Alfonse hurried to put their paintings to dry and take their coats.  
  
"May I walk you home, Miss Hendriks?" Alfonse asked.  
  
Marya wanted, somewhat, to accept the offer. She wanted more.  
  
Buttoning her coat, she said, "I'll buy you a coffee."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I included the interlude chapters because as much as I love Wesper (and I think it's clear by now that I love Wesper), there's a lot to explore in the idea of soulmates. Like how so often soulmates are romantic/sexual partners, but what about aromantic-spectrum/asexual-spectrum characters? Can a person lose their soulmate? What about multiple soulmates, or platonic soulmates with romantic partners, or... etc. Yeah. I didn't get to explore all of those but I wanted to delve into some of those sorts of questions. And I really wanted to give Marya a real partner who could deserve her.
> 
> Anyway. Did that land for you? Did you like it? Just want to get back to the Wesper...? Let me know :)


	18. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter focuses heavily on Dutch wedding traditions, but I did my best to include something Welsh (for the Wandering Isle) and Hausa (for Novyi Zem). Just 'cause, it also includes an anecdote from my parents' wedding. That said, there are several original pieces I made up based on Kerch culture. 
> 
> There is some homophobia; it's not violent but it is present.

Wylan carried the contract to the Church of Barter, tucked safely in the inside pocket of his jacket. He resisted the urge to touch it as he went. The weight and crispness of the pages reassured him enough—and likely gave an indication of its location, but on the off chance, he resolved not to tempt fate. Or Kaz Brekker.

The morning was Ketterdam-dreary, hung thick with mist off the harbors. The Church of Barter was not heated. It would likely be a long service—the minister had been burning lately about wastrels and Ghezen’s disapproval.

Wylan glanced over his shoulder for the third time in under a minute.

“He’ll be along,” Marya promised.

“I should have left out his gloves. He’s always forgetting.”

Jesper rarely joined Wylan and Marya at church, and Wylan never blamed him for that. The minister was all afire over wastrels, but they both knew it was something else that truly angered him. Or, as Jesper put it,  _ That’s not the bug that crawled up his butt and died. _ Which wasn’t helpful, though it had made Wylan snicker twice during services the past month. Still, it had been two months now since the letter arrived from the holy council at the monastery in Vaarken, and the minister was visibly angered by it.

Not that he could do a thing, not against the holy council.

Marya smiled. “Jesper can look after himself for a few hours.”

“I know…”

“Colm won’t let him forget his gloves.”

That assuaged Wylan’s concern, though not his fluttering nerves.

“Everything will be fine today,” Marya said, and Wylan tried to believe it.

When they reached the church, the minister met them at the door. To Wylan’s surprise, so did Jellen Radmakker. He tried not to show his surprise—and worry. He kept his expression unreadable and his hand steady as he removed the contract and placed it in the minister’s waiting hand.

The minister unfolded the papers and did the thing Wylan could not: he read them.

“If I may,  _ predikant _ ,” Radmakker said, reaching for the contract. The title was rarely used but carried significant weight.

Wylan glanced at Marya. They had done everything they could, but there were simply too many factors outside Wylan’s control. What was Radmakker up to? The man lived consistently in a state of practiced neutrality, and though Wylan had never known him to be anything but as good as his word… whose side was he on here?

The minister hesitated for one long, weighty moment, and even the mist seemed to recoil from him. Then he handed the contract to the most respected member of the Merchant Council.

“Yes, everything appears in order,” Radmakker said—and was it Wylan’s imagination, or had he reviewed it just a touch too quickly to actually read the document? Either way, Wylan breathed easier. Radmakker would keep his word, then. “If you would join me today, Wylan?”

Wylan accepted the contract from Radmakker and, unable to find the words, followed him into the church. Months ago, Wylan had asked Radmakker’s assistance. He had been surprised that Radmakker asked only one question:  _ are you meant for him? _

Wylan was, so he said with every certainty.

Radmakker had nodded and said he would be honored.

* * *

Jesper shifted in his pew, trying not to draw any more attention than he already had. Most people were over it by now. There had been some murmurs—Kerch society was like that. Well, Geldin District was like that. Unfortunately, their petition for a different district had been rejected, so Geldin District it was.

When a Kerch woman would be called to marry that day, she wore a crown of flowers in her hair. Everyone knew that here was a bride-to-be. In a smaller town, they probably already knew which young man had arrived in the church carrying their legal agreements. Any romance of a Kerch wedding was summarily postponed by ensuring the bride- and groom-to-be brought their paperwork.

So when Jesper reached the church that morning with a crown of flowers, everyone knew what he meant by it.

He didn’t mind. The fuss, constrained by typical Merch understatement, amused Jesper. Ooh, a man with flowers! Well I  _ never! _ How was he meant to keep from laughing? Though he wasn’t supposed to know where Wylan was sitting, but couldn’t help seeking him out. Jesper loved a little nonsense commotion. Wylan liked it less.

The excitement had faded as he struggled to sit through the dull sermon. Yeah, yeah, Ghezen, affrontery, holy kruge…

“Jes,” Colm murmured.

Jesper hoped his da wasn’t hating this. His religion was… quite different. The least he could do was sit still, Jesper supposed, doing his best.

Finally, the minister concluded, transitioning from an impassioned screed to an almost eerily calm, “What business?”

“I petition the church for Ghezen’s blessing,” said Jellen Radmakker.

By tradition, the groom’s father petitioned for Ghezen’s blessing. Wylan’s father was busy rotting in prison. Wylan must be the “groom”, for traditional roles—they were challenging Ghezen’s adherents enough asking that the god of commerce bless a union of two men. It would give them more credibility if Jesper played the role of the “bride”, joining into the old, established, and well-monied Kerch Van Eck family.

Wylan had fretted. (He was cute when he fretted.) It made no difference to Jesper. The church wedding was perfunctory—they were already legally married.

“For whom do you petition?” asked the minister like the words were poison—Jesper restrained his grin to the very best of his ability.

“On behalf of Wylan Van Eck, on the occasion of his marriage.”

The minister motioned them up to the stage. It was exactly the same place where, two years ago, Kuwei Yul-Bo had ‘died’. Last they heard, Nhaban was at the Little Palace, slowly turning Zoya Nazyalensky’s hair grey.

Wylan took the stage, Jellen Radmakker not far behind him. Marya could have done it, but the role was traditionally taken by a man. They joked about asking Kaz, and would have asked Colm were he not already a member of the wedding party on Jesper’s side. There was Alfonse, but Wylan was hesitant with his mother’s new romantic interest. So Wylan had asked the one man on the Merchant Council he truly trusted. Jesper drummed his fingers on his knees as they made their seemingly endless ascent. (Really, it was seven steps, why did it seem to take them months?)

Radmakker would attest to Wylan’s character. He would give his word that not only was Wylan an honorable man, he had the means to support his husband. Kerch weddings were strange affairs, even if they did include gorgeous flower crowns. Jesper’s included less-than-traditional Kaelish myrtle. He’d had his palms and hands painted with intricate designs—nearly lost his mind sitting for them, but if Jesper was to be a bride, he wanted Zemeni traditions as well. He didn’t need every tradition incorporated. A piece of paper promising him a lifetime with his lost prince was enough. But in all the Kerch pomp, Jesper meant to have his place.

“Wylan Van Eck,” said the minister, “to whom do you intend to be married today?”

To which Wylan answered, in a clear voice that would reach every corner of the chapel, “I intend to marry Jesper Fahey.”

Jesper didn’t consider himself a particularly hopeless romantic, but hearing his name said so loud and sure in Wylan’s voice, seeing the way Wylan’s face glowed when he saw Jesper, did something wonderful to his heart. That was Jesper and Colm’s cue to join Wylan and Radmakker. As they did, Wylan’s eyes didn’t leave Jesper. The two stood several feet apart. Those feet would have disappeared in two steps and Jesper could have Wylan in his arms—but he forced himself to wait.

“Who accepts this petition?”

“Colm Fahey,” Colm said, “Jesper Fahey’s father.”

This part Jesper didn’t mind so much. Aside from being too far from Wylan, it wasn’t so bad, it was similar to a tradition they had in Novyi Zem. Admittedly the Zemeni tradition was about inclusion of the family, whereas the Kerch tradition had more of a mercantile aspect.

They had a fine view of the church from here. Some members of the congregation looked bored. Some looked annoyed, and others genuinely happy. There, by the high window, Jesper caught a slim figure crouched almost at the roof. He smiled, though he wouldn’t risk waving to her. He knew she had let herself be seen.

“Colm Fahey, do you freely consent to enter your son into this contract of marriage to be blessed by Ghezen’s hand?”

“I do.”

That would have been the time for an unsatisfied parent to say they did not, or that the groom had not shown his ability to provide adequately.

The minister turned. “Wylan Van Eck, do you freely consent to abide by the rules of this union and its outcomes, accepting your… groom… with what wealth or debt he may bring?”

“I do,” Wylan spoke without no hesitation or hint of doubt. Not even a falter at the mention of _debt_.

“So be it. Wylan Van Eck and Colm Fahey freely give their consent to these proceedings. Henceforth, Wylan Van Eck and Jesper Fahey shall be deemed joined in the eyes of Ghezen, may their fortunes rise by His will.”

And  _ that _ was Jesper’s cue. Another time it might have bothered him. He had no lines to speak in the ceremony—Kerch truly saw little to respect in its women, didn’t it? But he had known what to expect, and he had what he wanted. He strode across the stage and swept up his husband in a kiss that was definitely more than Wylan expected. When they broke apart, he was flushed pink, his eyes glittering.

There was plenty of fuss to be had later. There would be a reception, something stuffy and filled with upstanding Kerch citizens. Who knew what was waiting for them at the lake house tomorrow; Nina had volunteered to arrange that piece of the celebration. Jesper couldn’t imagine anything better than this moment. No fine food or revelry or rowdy song would be better than this moment with his no-longer-lost prince, his gorgeous soulmate who loved every broken and brilliant piece of him.

“Well, Mister Fahey,” Wylan asked, “how does it feel to be the second-luckiest man in Ketterdam?”

Jesper grinned. “You tell me, Mister Fahey.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end!
> 
> I hope you've enjoyed reading this fic as much as I've enjoyed writing it! Thank you again to those of you who have left reviews; I love hearing from you.
> 
> Once again, thank you to the betas and artists, more than once I looked back at the shared drafts to keep myself in the right frame of mind to keep writing. 
> 
> This was an interesting fic to set up, because I ended up rereading the books trying to find where Jesper and Wylan could interact in a way that served the fic without changing how they felt toward each other at that point in canon. Which, admittedly, did make it a bit longer and angstier than I initially planned (I really was aiming for 10K). 
> 
> But they did, in the end, live happily ever after.


End file.
